BV 

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^^Sunday-School 
Organization 
and Methods 




•m 



OHAS. ROAD® 




ftass *fi V I 55 
Book JC44 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Sunday-School 
Organization and Methods 



By 

CHAS. ROADS, D. D. 

Recently General Secretary of the Pennsylvania State Sunday-school 

Association, and General Field Worker of the Sunday-school 

Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church 

Author of 
"Teacher-training for the Sunday-school," "The Fifth 
Gospel, by Paul," " Christ Enthroned in the Indus- 
trial World," "Little Children in the Church 
of Christ," "Manual for Grading" 

INTRODUCTION 

By 

REV. CHARLES J. LITTLE, A. M. 

President Garrett Biblical Institute 



^ 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



(X 

■ 






COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
WORKER'S LIBRARY. 

A FEW PRACTICAL HELPS. 

I. Text-books for Study. 

1. Revised Normal Lessons, By Dr. Hurlbut 

2. Teacher Training in the Sunday-school, 

By Dr. Roads. 

3. Seven Laws of Teaching, ... By Dr. J. M. Gregory. 

4. Supplemental Lessons, By Dr. Hurlbut. 

5. Normal Books, . . By Dr. Hamill and Geo. W. Pease. 

6. Grades and Studies in the Sunday-school, 

By Dr. Neely. 

II. For Reading and Reference. 

7. Teaching and Teachers, . . By Dr. H. Clay Trumbull. 

8. The Child's Religious Life, 

By Rev. W. G. Koons, Ph. D. 

9. Sunday-school Success, By Amos R. Wells. 

10. Timothy Stand-by (Humorous), By Dr. Joseph Clark. 

11. The Boy Problem, By Dr. W. B. Forbush. 

12. Sunday-school Movements in America, . . By Brown. 

13. Seven Graded Sunday-schools, By Hurlbut. 

14. The Modern Sunday-school, ... By Bishop Vincent. 

15. How to Make the Sunday-school Go, ... By Brewer. 

16. Great Truths Simply Told, .... By Geo. W. Weed. 

17. Hints on Child Training, By Dr. Trumbull. 

18. Lessons from the Desk, . . By Rev. Harold Kennedy. 

19. The Organized Sunday-school, By Axtell. 

20. Pastoral Leadership of Sunday-school Forces, 

By Dr. Schauffler. 
3 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter. Page. 

I. Problems and Possibilities, 13 

II. Educational Development of the Sunday- 
School, 30 

III. The Psychological Basis of Grading, . . 39 

IV. Teacher Training Made Practical, .... 48 
V. The Wesson Courses, 56 

Appendix — Illustrative Studies. 

1. Christ the Model Teacher, 67 

2. Pedagogical Study of Christ Teaching at 

Jacob's Well, 75 

3. Pedagogical Study of Christ Teaching on 

the Way to Emmaus, 83 

4. Psychology in the Parable of the Sower, 89 

5. Diagram of the Graded Sunday-School, . . 95 

6. A Study in Statistics, 103 

7. The Success of Some Great Sunday-Schools, 106 



PREFACE. 



The substance of this discussion of Sunday- 
school organization and methods was given in 
courses of lectures to the theological students of 
Garrett Biblical Institute and of the Boston School 
of Theology, to Sunday-school teachers and su- 
perintendents in several Chautauquas, and in 
many Institutes in twenty or more States of the 
Union. Many requests for the publication of 
these suggestions and descriptions of actual re- 
sults achieved have come from the persons who 
heard them from the platform. The Dean of the 
Boston University School of Theology writes of 
the lectures he heard, now given in a form more 
suitable for reading and reference, in the follow- 
ing appreciation : 

"In the spring of 1904 a course of lectures 
was delivered by Dr. Roads before the student 
body of the School of Theology of Boston Uni- 
versity on Sunday-school Methods. It was felt 
that the increased stress which is being placed in 
the Church at large upon the function of religious 
training would make a fundamental and suggest- 
ive treatment of such a theme exceedingly valu- 
able to those in preparation for the responsible 
office of pastors and teachers. The lectures were 

7 



8 PREFACE. 

found to correspond to the demands of the highly- 
important theme, and were listened to with great 
interest and satisfaction. 

"A noticeable feature was the amount of con- 
crete illustration and proof which was brought to 
the support of the theories that were given favor- 
able consideration. It is to be esteemed a matter 
for sincere congratulation to the great company 
of Sunday-school workers that an opportunity to 
peruse these lectures is now afforded. 

"Hsnry C. Sheldon." 

The students of Garrett Biblical Institute, at 
Evanston, Illinois, at the close of the week's 
course of Sunday-school lectures, took for them 
the unusual action of presenting resolutions of 
thanks. They are so discriminating as to be 
worthy of record: 

We, the students of Garrett Biblical Institute, hav- 
ing heard with much pleasure and great profit the series 
of lectures given in this school by Dr, Chas. Roads, Field 
Secretary for the Sunday-school Union of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, desire to express by resolution our 
hearty appreciation of his earnestness, his comprehen- 
sive view of the problems of the Sunday-school, and the 
thoroughly practical nature of his suggestions toward 
improvement in methods and work. 

It is confidently hoped, because this book is 

so largely a record of actual achievements by 

many workers in the Sunday-school field, that 

it will prove helpful and inspiring to many more. 

New York, January, 1905. *-" ■**•• 




INTRODUCTION. 

The; lectures that formed the basis of this 
brief book were first heard by me at a Sunday- 
school Assembly in South Dakota. Their sanity 
and simplicity, their lucidity and intelligence so 
delighted me that I urged Dr. Roads to deliver 
them to the students of Garrett. This he did to 
the great advantage and satisfaction of the Semi- 
nary. 

The author unites the experience of a very 
skillful and successful teacher with that of a 
large-minded and consecrated pastor; he knows 
a model school when he sees one, and also a model 
Church ; hence the reports of his observations and 
his comments upon them carry unusual weight. 
He has more than experience; he has a trained 
intelligence. Without ostentation of expert 
knowledge, or obtrusive repetition of undried 
theories, or theories of any kind, he reveals in 
every chapter the thoughtful and independent 
student of psychology, especially in its application 
to the art of teaching. And he has, moreover, 
the large view of the pastoral calling which makes 
him an inspiring guide for the ministers of the 
twentieth century. 

9 



IO INTRODUCTION. 

There is nothing new in the vaunted discovery 
that youth is the accepted time for religious in- 
struction; this is a very old and a very obvious 
truth. Moses charged Joshua "that the children 
which had not known should hear the words of 
the law and learn to fear the Lord their God." 
The rite of confirmation in Catholic and many 
Protestant Churches has borne witness for cen- 
turies to the same belief in the largest sections of 
Christendom. There is something grotesque in 
the proclamation as a discovery of "the new psy- 
chology" that adolescence is the epoch of decision. 
Moses and Plato, Luther and Loyola, Rousseau 
and Wesley assumed this as an axiom of educa- 
tion. 

But how to guide the child or the adolescent 
to right and wise decision is a problem older than 
the Choice of Hercules or the Choice of Moses. 
In other words, the serious task is to determine 
the range and the limits and the proper methods 
of moral and religious instruction. 

The Sunday-school has been left to develop 
itself; there has been all too little consideration 
of its problems and its possibilities. The individ- 
ual Churches have been sinfully slow to appre- 
ciate the importance, the difficulties, the perils of 
Sunday-school work, and the grandeur of its 
promise to consecrated and energetic intelligence. 
There have been indeed, as Dr. Roads points out, 



INTROD UCTION. 1 1 

some splendid exceptions; but these reveal, by 
glaring contrast, the inadequate methods and the 
intellectual poverty of the great majority. And it 
can not be pleaded that this lack of method and 
this mental weakness are atoned for by super- 
abundant spiritual power, for it is not so. There 
is a vast difference between the terms spiritually- 
minded and mentally slothful; the former serve 
and love God with all the mind and are eager to 
discover the best methods of doing His work. 

Methodists surely should not rebel at the sug- 
gestion of better methods ; the revival, from which 
they derive their name and their organizations, 
was notable for its methods of religious training. 
Its great leader differed from Whitefield and other 
contemporaries because he deserved and glorified 
by his intelligent operations the name that his 
enemies fastened upon him as a reproach. He 
was always sure of his goal ; and always hunting 
for the fittest and promptest means to reach it. 
Dr. Roads's ideal of the Sunday-school is not 
vague and nebulous; he would strengthen and 
enlarge its spiritual influence; but he would en- 
large its scope also, making it both evangelistic 
and ethical, a place of decision and a place of de- 
velopment, a place where Christ is accepted, and 
a place where the mind of Christ is studied in its 
many applications to modern conditions. 

Here as elsewhere a vital and inevitable ques- 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

tion is how, and Dr. Roads strengthens his reply 
by showing that what he suggests has been al- 
ready achieved. 

There be many that love routine, not to say 
ruts. They waste much energy in defending poor 
habits and resisting all improvements as depar- 
tures from "the old paths." They love the cheap 
and hate the costly, and by their niggardly pro- 
visions defeat the purpose of the institutions that 
they control. Managers like these in charge of 
Sunday-schools will not like this book. 

There be those also who are enamored of the 
newest newnesses and who would transform the 
Sunday-school into a tumbling ground for re- 
ligious and moral acrobats, into an exhibition of 
all sorts of theological and ethical novelties. 
These will have no pleasure in Dr. Roads. 

There are, however, earnest spiritual minds 
that recognize the gravity and the majesty of the 
Sunday-school problem, and who are eager to at- 
tack it with intelligence and patience; these are 
reading with sane and docile minds whatever is 
written seriously by "those that know," "proving 
all things" as they read and "holding fast to that 
which is good." There are, I feel sure, enough 
of them to give Dr. Roads a fit audience and a 
large one. Charges J. Little;. 

GARRETT BIBUCAI, INSTITUTE), 

February 18, 1905. 



CHAPTER I. 

PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES. 

The Sunday-school in every denomination of 
Christendom is becoming the next great enthusi- 
asm of the Church. Educational leaders and pas- 
tors are discussing courses of Bible study for it, 
and Sunday-school workers are manifesting a 
responsibility and desire for larger results in 
Bible knowledge and character. Probably no 
movement of the Church presents so many prob- 
lems, and all of them fundamental. We first 
discuss eight or ten of these problems in brief 
suggestiveness for a comprehensive view. 

i. First, the Problem of Sunday-school Archi- 
tecture. 

What kind of a building will now adequately 
serve our organized Sunday-school? Shall we 
accept as the final model the "easy separateness" 
and "ready togetherness" of the well-known and 
widely adopted Akron plan? Or is it desirable 
to have entire separation of all the departments 
for the whole session, so that we shall have a 
group of schools wholly distinct ? Many interest- 
ing experiments are now projected and in oper- 
ation; and, serving you rather as reporter than 

13 



14 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

theorist, let me briefly outline a few of the types 
of buildings. 

The Akron scheme is that of a large single 
room with folding-door class apartments, usually 
in two tiers on the sides and rear. Two of these 
apartments usually are larger than the rest, and 
are occupied respectively by the Primary and 
the next higher departments. The central body 
of the main room is given to the boys and girls, 
divided into small classes, and the rear and the 
side apartments remaining to young men, young 
women, and adult classes. Opening exercises are 
common to the whole school with every room 
open. The teaching is separate, and is followed 
by review and closing exercises in common. 

The Separated Primary Department is the 
next type of building. Here the little children 
are entirely apart from the rest during the whole 
session. They have their opening worship spe- 
cially adapted to childhood, and all their work 
more strictly graded. In the main school this 
makes possible a more dignified and enriched wor- 
ship for opening and closing, which will hold the 
ambitious boy and youth. 

The Departmental Sunday-school Building is 
a still further evolution of the strict grading and 
adaptation of teaching. In this type there are 
entirely separate rooms for the smallest children 
called Beginners, for the Primary from about six 
to eight years of age, for the boys from eight to 



AND METHODS, 1 5 

thirteen, and for the girls of that period ; separate 
rooms for young men's and young women's 
classes, and an assembly room for the advanced 
classes ; usually four or five large rooms and very 
many smaller subdivisions. In such schools there 
are really distinct organizations for each depart- 
ment, though under one general management, 
and specialized work for each grade most fully 
developed. 

2. The next Problem is that of the Sunday- 
school Field. 

Who are to be included in the school? For 
what classes shall we plan, and how far shall our 
efforts at ingathering extend ? We have long ago 
passed the conception of the Sunday-school as a 
meeting for children, though the unfortunate 
phrase, "the nursery of the Church," will prob- 
ably long be used by belated convention speakers, 
and the good visitor begin his address, "Dear 
children !" The Sunday-school is the most com- 
prehensive of all Church services. All the Church 
is to be in the Sunday-school, and then it will be 
comparatively easy to have all the Sunday-school 
in the Church services. The ideal is reached in 
some Churches where the Sunday-school is "the 
Bible studying service of the Church/' and is 
ranked with morning preaching and worship. Its 
comprehensiveness is shown as it begins with the 
Cradle Roll for the infants as soon as their names 
can be secured, making the real "Infant Class" 



1 6 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

of those as yet unable to attend ; then the "Begin- 
ners," from three to six years of age ; the Primary, 
to nine years; the next department to thirteen; 
the youths to sixteen; and the adults beyond to 
include every member of the Church and every 
man and woman in the community. The ingath- 
ering is now prosecuted by house-to-house visit- 
ing, which plans not to miss a single person, or, 
better still, by an organized occupation of the 
entire field, divided into blocks in continuous 
charge of earnest workers, and regularly visited 
and watched. Only such a complete searching 
of every home and every street and road in city 
and country reaches Christ's command to take 
His Gospel to every creature, and to teach them 
all things He commanded. The value of it is 
shown by a story related by an old lady who felt 
moved in her early Christian life to visit the 
Smith family in Palmyra, New York, but who 
timidly postponed doing it, and finally neglected 
it. She says, "One of the family was Joseph 
Smith, then a little child, afterward the founder 
of Mormonism." That young woman had the 
whole Mormon question in her hand, and might 
have saved this country the awful stench and evils 
of Mormonism. And Joseph Smith, saved, might 
have become an earlier Moody or a John Wesley. 
Think of the greatness of our Sunday-school's 
yet unoccupied field! Only 17 per cent of the 
population of America are yet enrolled in all its 



AND METHODS, 1 7 

Sunday-schools; yet some States, like Pennsyl- 
vania, have 24 per cent, though others, like Massa- 
chusetts, only 12 per cent. Some counties, like 
Snyder, Union, Northumberland, and others in 
Pennsylvania, have 60, 50, nearly 40 per cent of 
their population ; some towns have 80 per cent. 

3. The third Problem I mention is the Rela- 
tion of the Sunday-school to the Church's Sun- 
day services. 

The Sunday-school may be held before the 
morning preaching service, as it is in many 
Churches, from 9.30 o'clock to 10.30 or 10.45 
o'clock, the preaching service beginning at 11 
o'clock. This is better than to crowd it into that 
part of an hour between the close of the morning 
service and one o'clock afternoon. But Sunday 
morning is not the best time in which to build up 
a great and worthy Sunday-school. This hour 
before Church service excludes most of the 
mothers from the school, because they are unable 
to complete the round of household duties in time. 
The morning hour will secure very few of the 
working men or the hard-driven merchants or 
professional men. They will not rise on Sunday 
as early as usual, and will not in any large num- 
bers get ready for service by 9 o'clock. The hour 
is also objectionable because it crowds the preach- 
ing service, and constitutes, in connection with 
that, a very long, continuous service, which many 
will not attend from first to last. Besides, it pre- 
2 



1 8 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

eludes all after services of the school, either as 
conferences of teachers for some pressing subject 
or as evangelistic services for the scholars. Still 
more objectionable is the Sunday-school immedi- 
ately following the morning preaching. The 
great body of the school does not come in time 
for the preaching, but gathers as the first service 
nears its close, and in turn the attendants on the 
first service will not tarry for the Sunday-school. 
The sad sight which is witnessed in Churches 
where the Sunday-school is held before preaching 
of a great procession of children turning down 
the street instead of into the preaching, has its 
counterpart where schools are held after preach- 
ing in great crowds of fathers and mothers turn- 
ing down the street instead of into the Sunday- 
school. Which is the worse for the present or for 
the future, who can tell ? 

No one can question that the earnest purpose 
of the great body of Sunday-school workers of 
the land is to give the Sunday-school the best op- 
portunity for its work; hence the fundamental 
importance of its adjustment to all the Sunday 
services of the Church. 

In practical experience the best time for the 
Sunday-school is from 2 o'clock or 2.30 in the 
afternoon to 4 o'clock. It is true there are great 
and growing Sunday-schools, not a large num- 
ber, however, which meet in the early morning, 
and we know of admirable and successful schools 



AND METHODS. 1 9 

meeting at the noon hour. In small country 
schools, and under other peculiar circumstances, 
there is no other time available than that in con- 
nection with the preaching service. 

But in the Sunday-schools of villages, towns, 
and of cities especially, there is no time which 
furnishes the opportunity that the middle of Sun- 
day afternoon does. Then, after a leisurely noon 
meal, the whole family can attend ; then the school 
may begin with a full attendance and without 
crowding any other service; may, when special 
interest renders it desirable, prolong the session 
ten or fifteen minutes ; then the Bible-school will 
stand out as a great service of the Lord's-day 
and not as the prelude or afterlude of another 
service which it crowds into too great brevity or 
renders wearisome by its previous interest. 

The three Sunday services, then, would stand 
out in distinctness and remain uncrowded; the 
morning worship and preaching from 10.30 to 
12 o'clock having full time for orderly and restful 
worship and a reasonable time for the Gospel 
message. How unseemly the rush of this service 
if pressed into the hour or a little more between 
eleven and noon ! Then, too, the entire family, 
after a longer rest than on week-days, and a 
social, unhurried breakfast and home worship, 
can repair to the morning preaching. This stands 
apart as the only morning service, and at its close 
the whole family returns to the home, the noon 



20 Sunday-school organization 

lunch is prepared and enjoyed, and time enough 
to do all housework by the family without hurry, 
before 2.30, when all can attend the Sunday- 
school; then returning home for evening meal 
and the Young People's service and Church wor- 
ship of the evening. 

This gives the home as much time for its social 
fellowship on the Sabbath-day as any other ar- 
rangement. It gives the long morning hours 
until 10.30. It allows the leisurely noon meal 
and over two hours intermission, and it gives 
about three hours after the school, even if all the 
family return to the evening service. 

Objection is urged on behalf of the Junior 
League, usually held in the afternoon, when the 
Sunday-school convenes in the morning. But 
practical experience once more shows that the 
children, also, should have a mid-week religious 
service, and the Junior meeting after day-school 
in the week has a value beyond what is possible 
on Sunday. 

The Sunday afternoon Sunday-school is the 
rule in Pennsylvania and other States which have 
by far the largest percentage of their population 
enrolled in the Sunday-school. Taking only the 
States which contain about the same proportion 
of Protestant element for our comparison, we find 
that where the early morning schools are the rule 
the enrollment is from 15 to 18 per cent of the 
population ; in States where the noon hour school 



AND METHODS, 21 

prevails, it ranges from 12 per cent or less to 15 
per cent of population ; while in the States in 
which the afternoon session is the rule the enroll- 
ment rises to 22, 23, or 24 per cent for whole 
Commonwealths. 

Will the Sunday-school people attend the 
Church services as well under the afternoon ar- 
rangement? They do attend in larger numbers 
where any effort is made to secure their presence. 
Is it wise at once to change from morning school 
to afternoon? By no means. There must be 
sufficient discussion to show some of the real ad- 
vantages of the change ; there should, if possible, 
be a united change of all the schools of the place, 
and a practical unanimity for it by your Sunday- 
school. 

4. This discussion of the best hour suggests 
our next Problem, which is the Relation of the 
Sunday-school to the Home. 

It is significant of the real progress the Sun- 
day-school is now making that this difficult phase 
is receiving fully as large attention as any other. 
The duty of parental religious instruction is en- 
forced from the pulpit and in our periodicals 
more fully, the co-operation of the home with the 
Sunday-school lessons is systematically sought, 
and at least two Providential Sunday-school 
movements, the Home Department and the Cradle 
Roll, bear directly upon this need. Inadvertently 
and unintentionally, but none the less really, the 



22 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

Sunday-school has done damage to home religious 
teaching. It has relieved thoughtless parents of 
their sense of responsibility, and concentrates 
greatest attention upon the school. An investi- 
gation in many Sunday-school Conventions shows 
that very few teachers — about three to six out of 
four hundred — ever have parents of their scholars 
express any appreciation of the work they are 
doing, or ever have any encouragement from 
them; that many parents do not acquaint them- 
selves with the teacher w r ho is doing about all 
the religious teaching their children are getting, 
and that, in most cases, these parents strenuously 
object when the good teacher has brought their 
children to know Christ and to be ready to join 
His Church. The relation of the average parent, 
even though a professing Christian, to the real 
work of saving his child and training in godly 
character as the Sunday-school plans to do, is 
that of strange want of intelligent co-operation, 
if not of stupid indifference or hindrance. I de- 
clare this as the result of wide investigation in 
field work among Sunday-school teachers and offi- 
cers in twenty different States of the Union. 

When right relations are restored, it will be 
the parent who becomes the religious teacher pri- 
marily of the child. The Sunday-school teacher 
will be the intimate fellow teacher, whose work 
will be reviewed every Sunday when the child 
comes home, and whose services to the child will 



AND METHODS. 23 

be recognized and highly appreciated. By the 
Home Department all the parents who can not at- 
tend the session of the school will study the Uni- 
form Lesson, and Home Study Circles on the les- 
son are forming; and by the Cradle Roll the 
mother heart is most fully reached and stirred in 
spiritual care of her infant. And think of Home 
Departments five hundred strong in a single 
school, and Cradle Rolls of three hundred ! 

5. The Problem of the Curriculum of the Sun- 
day-school we discuss more fully later. It is 
sufficient here to say that it is at the center of 
things which make for effectiveness. Let us say, 
rather, that courses of study for any one series 
of lessons can not cover the needs of the Sunday- 
school. The best schools are giving both a topical 
and an expository lesson every Sunday; the top- 
ical to accomplish the education in Bible facts 
and history, and the expository or Uniform Inter- 
national Lesson to present the moral and spiritual 
message from God. There are now many such 
Sunday-schools, and they produce real Bible stu- 
dents in the English Bible with thoroughness and 
readiness in wide information concerning its con- 
tents. 

6. What is the Best Possible Organization 
Educationally of the Bible-school of the Church? 

We can only solve this problem when we thor- 
oughly recognize the unique character and place 
of the Sunday-school, its peculiar and difficult 



24 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

text-book the Bible, its untrained volunteer teach- 
ing force, and its brief once-a-week session. Yet 
an organization of remarkable helpfulness has 
been perfected in many schools fully adapted to 
Sunday-school needs. This also will require a 
fuller discussion. I mention it here simply for 
the sake of a complete outline view. Grading 
belongs to the educational organization, but is 
a large subject. What is the best basis upon 
which to grade the Sunday-school, and how thor- 
oughly and definitely can the grades be main- 
tained ? 

7. What can the Sunday-school do in 'Ethical 
Teaching for the training of moral character? 

In a large and systematic sense this question 
is quite recent, though from the first, to be sure, 
the Sunday-school aimed at character and life. 
Indirect effort, however, or such development of 
morals as will come incidentally with religious 
teaching, is now felt to be insufficient. From the 
long confusion upon this subject some principles 
are emerging into distinctness. In the first place, 
we now know that moral traits must be culti- 
vated one by one, each distinctly understood, de- 
fined, and uniquely strengthened. Secondly, we 
know that it is by action and exercise that moral 
traits are developed. Thirdly, we distinguish 
training from teaching. Training is to signify 
the actual production of the character desired by 
that combining of instruction, influencing, stimu- 



AND METHODS. 2$ 

lating to action by the pupil's personal initiative, 
and that gentle overseeing and guidance which 
is effective but not subversive of the pupil's full 
freedom and responsibility. 

Here is the teacher's larger work which over- 
flows into the whole week. By seeking such con- 
tact at every convenient time with the pupil as will 
intensify and extend the influence of the Sunday's 
work and lessons this training is to be accom- 
plished. It is being accomplished, as I am glad 
to be able to report, by many individual teachers, 
and in not a few great schools almost by every 
teacher. How blessed will be the Sunday-school 
when everywhere, in a systematic and, may we 
not hope, a scientific way, the scholars w r ill be 
trained to be truthful, honest, faithful to every 
trust, industrious, gentle, forgiving, and in every 
relation of life to be sanely and strictly consci- 
entious ! 

8. Closely related to the Ethical Problem is 
that other endeavor now being developed in many 
schools, the training of the scholars to be Church 
workers. 

Some one has humorously divided the average 
Church into workers, shirkers, and jerkers. 
About one-tenth may, by some stretch of charity, 
be called workers ; but this one-tenth will include 
all the trustees, class-leaders, officers of Mission- 
ary Societies, and teachers of the Sunday-school 
in most Churches. Think of an organization with 



26 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

a sublime purpose like the Church of Christ, and 
only one-tenth of it working at all ! What army 
could win battles with only one-tenth armed and 
fighting? What factory could prevent bank- 
ruptcy with nine-tenths standing about and look- 
ing on the one-tenth at work ? Yet there are wise, 
owlishly wise pastors, who think the Church is 
overorganized ! If the absolutely idling nine- 
tenths of their Church should come in a body to 
the parsonage and ask to be directed to some defi- 
nite work for Christ and the Church, what would 
this pastor give them to do? What work, not 
simply individual, but in connection with the 
Church? 

There are not quite nine-tenths of the average 
Church among the shirkers, for there are a few 
jerkers. These last the pastor must have in mind, 
and he tries to provide for them of necessity to 
his and the Church's peace; but the shirkers 
should appeal no less to his earnest soul. 

These shirkers are a great concern to pro- 
gressive Sunday-school teachers, and they are 
planning to add no more to their number, but to 
send from the Sunday-school into the Church a 
great company of intelligent, eager-to-work, and 
trained-to-work Church members. So they are 
being taught the history and doctrines of the 
Church, the benevolent organizations and move- 
ments of the Church, and a real Christian life. 
Scholars are trained to habits of Church attend- 



AND METHODS. 2^ 

ance, habits of systematic giving, and to intelli- 
gent hearing of sermons. As your reporter, I 
must say we are only in the beginnings of this 
movement; but it is spreading rapidly, and is 
no longer a theory, but a practical condition of 
things in some schools. 

9. The Sunday-school is the greatest evangel- 
istic agency of the Church of Christ. 

How to have this opportunity appreciated, 
and how to utilize it richly, are problems well ad- 
vanced to solution. Let us see at least five, a 
handful of peculiar advantages for winning to 
Christ found in the Sunday-school. (1) It is 
usually that meeting of the Church which has the 
largest attendance. (2) It has the largest num- 
ber of unsaved people. (3) It gathers the chil- 
dren and young people who are easiest to be 
reached. It is the Church's largest and ripest 
harvest-field. (4) It is that meeting which has 
the largest number of personal workers, these 
workers best related to the unsaved, and all using 
the Word of God, which is the Holy Spirit's ma- 
terial for the conviction and conversion of men. 
(5) It is the meeting of the Church which can be 
most easily and largely increased. By a little 
enthusiasm, by much house-to-house visiting, by 
occupying the wdiole field, and by wise new plans 
great Sunday-schools have been grown. One 
school numbers over three thousand, and added 
seven hundred and fifty in a year ; five others over 



28 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

two thousand, some of these adding three to six 
hundred during the year; about forty others in 
the Methodist Episcopal Church number more 
than a thousand each. Much of this great in- 
crease came in two years as the result of one 
movement of the Sunday-school Union. The 
plans for actually harvesting these vast fields are 
no longer spasmodic. Decision-day is not sprung 
upon the school and only disappointing results 
secured, but it is prepared for wisely during many 
weeks before. Every teacher's deep interest is 
awakened and intensified ; every parent is sought 
to be reached and intelligently prepared to co- 
operate; every scholar is designated, and after 
weeks of meetings by teachers and parents of this 
character, the result usually follows that almost 
every unsaved scholar deliberately decides to fol- 
low Christ After this general effort, personal 
work continues. Many teachers now plan to pre- 
sent Christ upon the first day a new scholar at- 
tends. They find there is no better time. The 
new scholar expects it. Usually he will yield at 
once, and begin a Christian life. 

Plans for the little ones of the Beginners and 
of the Primary Department are another problem 
still more fully solved. Nothing is more beautiful 
in Sunday-school work to-day than the simple, 
sweet, and helpful way in which Jesus is presented 
to very little children ; except the still sweeter 
and artless way these little ones understand the 
Savior and receive Him. 



AND METHODS. 29 

10. But among the many Problems of the 
Bible-school the one at the heart of its power is 
that of teacher supply and teacher training. It 
may be regarded as too optimistic to say that, 
speaking once more as a reporter, this also is 
nearing solution; but I hope to show that there 
is no need of pessimism concerning it. It is the 
most important of all. As is the teacher so is the 
school. The teacher is the school, its atmosphere, 
its attraction if it has any, its mightiest influence, 
its most impressive lesson. What we put into 
the teacher grows like leaven to fill the entire 
school. 

Of special problems of the organized Sunday- 
school there are many like the Boy Problem, how 
to get him and how to hold him ; the question of 
men's classes, now so splendidly successful where 
the schools are planned to give them a fair oppor- 
tunity; the Bible in the school, which is vital to 
best work; the business organization, which is 
delightful to inspect in many schools; the utiliz- 
ing of special days; and the matter of the pas- 
toral leadership of the school. Especially upon 
this last question there has been remarkable prog- 
ress. But upon all of them a simple review of 
the leading Sunday-schools in all the Churches 
will be inspiring. 



CHAPTER II. 

EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

The true conception of the place and purpose 
of the Sunday-school constitutes it both a relig- 
ious meeting and a real school. It is twofold in 
scope and purpose. It should always maintain 
a religious atmosphere and be a time for prayer 
and worship. Any educational development 
which will eliminate the devotional wholly will do 
harm in the end. But, on the other hand, the 
Sunday-school which is only another spiritual 
service, chiefly singing, prayer, and exhortation 
in the class, and review, fails to reach lasting re- 
sults. 

We begin the better Sunday-school when we 
specialize to reach both of these results. This re- 
quires two series of lessons for each session. For 
the spiritual purpose of the school we use the Uni- 
form International Lesson. It is an expository 
treatment of a brief passage as nearly as possible 
a unit of truth. And expository or exegetical 
study of the Scriptures is most helpful to spiritual 
needs. The deeply spiritual of the Church in all 
ages have preferred expository sermonizing. 

30 



METHODS. 31 

They follow such preaching to-day in greatest 
crowds. Any arrangement of Bible lessons spe- 
cializing for spiritual helpfulness will naturally 
fall into such a system as the International series. 

But the International Uniform Lessons are 
not the best for the educational purpose. They 
do not present the contents of the successive books 
of the Bible helpfully for thorough study and 
mastery, nor its history systematically, nor its 
range of doctrines according to well-known peda- 
gogical principles. So that for the educational 
work of the Sunday-school there must be ar- 
ranged another series of Bible lessons on a work- 
able and effective method. This method must be 
topical, not textual or expository; for the topical 
is the logical order, and the plan of psychological 
growth of knowledge. 

Our Sunday-school becomes a school when 
we have a second series of lessons about the Bible 
and its contents in a topical form. We can ar- 
range many topics for a six or eight years' course 
to embrace the books of the Bible, classified, ana- 
lyzed, logically developed, and memorized; to 
teach the history in course, the biography, geog- 
raphy, ethics, and religious system; and to give 
in forms to be remembered and used the facts and 
truths of the whole Bible. For educational work, 
all this should be done just as schools and colleges 
do such work. If it be thought possible to mix 
religious application and exhortation all along 



32 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

such lessons, and thus to dispense with the exposi- 
tory lesson, it is enough to report that, from wide 
experience, we do not get the educational results, 
and it is not the best way to get the spiritual 
results. As a reporter, I could describe nearly 
a dozen Sunday-schools which for years have 
worked the two-lesson system with great success. 
They get the educational result of scholars fa- 
miliar with the history and contents of the Bible 
and able to pass creditable examinations upon 
them, and by continuing the Uniform Expository 
Lessons they also secure the spiritual results. 

Then must be added a system of real recita- 
tions by the pupils. Expression by the pupil is 
necessary to complete the impression made by 
the teacher. Expression is an intense form of 
mental activity, far more so than mere attention. 
An old-time teacher said to his boys, "I will learn 
you these lessons." But even the dictionary could 
have shown him that he could never learn another 
anything. He might teach, but learning is the 
result of self-activity by the student. Hence, the 
day when the Sunday-school introduces real reci- 
tation of lessons marks the beginning of genuine 
education there. The recitation, also, is a test of 
the teacher's work. It exhibits the scholar's meas- 
ure of understanding and retention. This is 
strikingly shown in a little book humorously com- 
mended by Mark Twain as the funniest book in 
the English language. It is the collection of ex- 



AND METHODS. 33 

aminations and recitations made by a New York 
schoolteacher during many years. How do the 
boys and girls understand the new truths and 
statements we so carefully give to them in public 
school and in Sunday-school ? Hear them in the 
public school after very careful instruction by this 
teacher : 

What is Congress? "Congress is composed 
of civilized, half-civilized, and savage." 

What is a demagogue? "A vessel filled with 
beer, whisky, and other liquors." 

What are the parts of the human system? 
"The head, the thorax, and the bowels, and the 
bowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y." 

Here are some sentences and definitions: 

"The men sent by the Gas Company go round 
and speculate the meter." 

"They had a strawberry vestibule." 

"There are a good many donkeys in the the- 
ological gardens." 

"Mercenary, one who feels for another." 

"Alias, a good man in the Bible." 

"Ipecac, a man who likes a good dinner." 

"A circle is a round straight line with a hole 
in the middle." 

"Climate lasts all the time, and weather only 
a few days." 

There are a hundred pages of this sort of 
ridiculous mistakes, declared to be bona fide by 
the good teacher, Miss Le Row, in that bright 
3 



34 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

book, "English as She is Taught" They illus- 
trate the way children understand, or misunder- 
stand, new lessons given to them and the impor- 
tance of having them expressed in recitations so 
that they may be corrected, systematized, and 
fully memorized. 

In precisely the same way our Sunday-school 
instruction is misunderstood. When we think of 
the strange names of men and places, the extraor- 
dinary events and facts, and the strange surround- 
ings of Oriental lands and ancient times, the won- 
der is that so much is really understood in Sun- 
day-school teaching. We are now having parents 
question their children when they return from the 
Sunday-school, and here are some results gath- 
ered by a few workers : 

Golden Texts recited by children upon their 
return from Sunday-school: 

"It is awful to be good on Sunday." 

"Hold a grater to Solomon's ear." (Behold 
a greater than Solomon is here.) 

"Strong drink is rising, wine in a monkey." 

"He hath made us to be meat and potatoes to 
the saints." (He hath made us meet to be par- 
takers with the inheritance of the saints.) 

It was an older scholar who was surprised to 
learn in a sermon that Sodom and Gomorrah were 
not man and wife as he had long supposed. The 
examination of some college men, who were also 
Sunday-school scholars, is a remarkable proof 



AND METHODS. 35 

of how little Sunday-school teaching has meant 
without recitations. Out of thirty-four, nine did 
not know what the crown of thorns means ; six- 
teen were ignorant of the significance of striking 
the rock ; sixteen knew nothing of Jacob's wrest- 
ling angel; thirty-two had never heard of the 
shadow upon Hezekiah's dial ; twenty-six did not 
know of Joshua's moon ; twenty-five did not know 
the fate of Lot's wife ; twenty-three did not under-, 
stand "Arimathean Joseph," and so on. 

In another examination of Sunday-school 
pupils, out of forty-two, not one could name the 
three sons of Adam ; no one could correctly name 
the three sons of Noah, and twenty-seven did not 
try ; only one correctly named the three patriarchs 
from whom the Jews descended ; only three could 
tell who led the Israelites into Canaan, though 
twenty-five knew it was Moses led them out of 
Egypt; only seventeen gave the first four books 
of the New Testament correctly; and individual 
answers to well-known questions were as amus- 
ing in ignorance as those of Miss Le Row's little 
book. 

Acting again as reporter for you, I can give 
remarkable instances of what a few years of 
recitations in Sunday-schools will achieve. I vis- 
ited a Sunday-school where an examination of 
three classes of boys, twelve years of age, in Old 
Testament history was so surprising for accuracy 
and readiness that it is doubtful whether an equal 



36 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

number of preachers could do as well. In another 
school a class of young ladies, sixteen in number 
and about sixteen years of age, drew a complete 
map of Paul's missionary journeys, giving outline 
and details of each province visited and complete 
itinerary, each student doing it in turn. Their 
proficiency in the Life of Christ and in Old Testa- 
ment eras was equally remarkable. In another 
school, where recitations were regular, but quar- 
terly and annual examinations optional, every 
scholar of the five hundred regularly asked for 
the examination without fail. This was for a 
period of five years, and, in addition, every pupil 
volunteered some extra memorizing to secure 
stars and seals on the diplomas given. These are 
simply specimens, which could be indefinitely ex- 
tended. 

For the topical lessons little booklets are usu- 
ally provided, and these are studied during the 
week and recited first in the school session. The 
spiritual lesson has the longer time, and is given 
last. In many cases the first lesson has eight or 
ten minutes ; the second, twenty-five or thirty min- 
utes. Judge Hitchhock, of Chicopee Falls, Mass., 
has issued a series of these General Lessons ; Prof. 
Henry A. Strong, of Erie, Pa., another ; and there 
are others like Dr. Hurlbut's excellent "Supple- 
mental Lessons" in single volumes, which have 
been used. A large and practical series of these 
lessons is being prepared. 



AND METHODS. 37 

The boys and girls will not object to this real 
school-work if it is wisely presented. The teach- 
ers who are lazy and object should be left behind 
while the procession moves on. But there should 
be wisdom and time given for introducing the 
general lessons and the recitations into any par- 
ticular school. 

Charts, blackboard lessons, graphic reviews, 
concert memorizing whenever possible, and all 
other educational devices and helps, are used in 
these advanced schools during the period of the 
General Lessons. Bible analysis, eras of Bible 
history, geography of Bible lands, all lend them- 
selves easily to graphic review and presentation, 
and no studies of any sort are so abounding in 
interest as these Bible lessons. 

The general organization of the Sunday-school 
must be adapted to this richer educational work. 
One fine Sunday-school has a "principal" in every 
department, in addition to the superintendent, 
who is the executive. The principal is specially 
in charge of this work. He coaches the teachers, 
examines the pupils for promotion, and develops 
further lessons. In other cases an assistant su- 
perintendent leads in educational plans and in 
complete grading of the school. 

This brings us to the problem of a simple and 
thoroughly adapted grading of the Sunday-school. 
We will consider that later, but mention it now as 
fundamental to the school work. 



38 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

Periodical examinations, at least quarterly and 
annually, will be provided for ; but at the begin- 
ning it is well to make these optional with the 
pupils. Let your plan be to promote on term 
work in recitations Sunday after Sunday, but 
upon examinations asked for by the scholar to 
grant a certificate showing the percentage at- 
tained. At the promotion to another department, 
grant a diploma of tasteful design. 

The school year is essential to the best work. 
Let the General Lessons begin in September, and 
run for a term of twelve or thirteen weeks. In- 
termit for Christmas holidays. Then begin the 
second term in January, and continue to Easter- 
tide ; and have the last term close with Children's- 
day or the last of June. Promotions may be des- 
ignated after the June term, but to take effect 
on the first Sunday of September. 

Special provision ought to be made in cities 
for the summer months; one Sunday-school or- 
ganized for a distinct summer school, with special 
exercises and lessons in addition to the Uniform 
International Lesson. The pupils were specially 
enrolled for this summer school, and the officers 
report the plan a success. It is not well, how- 
ever, to attempt the large educational work in 
cities in the summer months, and by the plan of 
a school year it can be done with no break nor 
confusion. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS 
OF GRADING. 

It was Horace Mann who fought the battle 
for grading in the public schools. It is interest- 
ing to observe that about the same arguments 
were used against him that are so familiar to 
Sunday-school people to-day, and it is well to 
remember that many of these arguments have 
much of truth and force. Grading, either in the 
public schools or as it is proposed for the Sunday- 
school, is not a perfect device by any means. It 
is simply the best possible for the great majority 
of pupils. 

Horace Mann met the objection that the un- 
graded school was the natural arrangement for 
the helpful influencing of the older pupils by the 
smallest children, and the smallest ones by the 
oldest. In many of the ungraded country schools 
the little children listened to the recitations day 
after day of the older classes, and picked up a 
helpful amount of knowledge before they reached 
those classes. The atmosphere of such a mixed 
school-room might be far more stimulating than 
that of the average primary school, where only 

39 



40 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

little ones are found, and lessons are all in their 
beginnings. But this real advantage of the un- 
graded school is more than offset, is offset many 
times over, by the specialized ability of the teacher 
confined to one grade, and by the specialized ap- 
pliances for teaching each grade. 

Objections on part of the teacher, that grad- 
ing would deprive of the pleasant variety of many 
different classes which the ungraded school fur- 
nishes, had a real basis of truth. Any one who, 
like the writer, has had actual experience of both 
a large ungraded country school in teaching, and 
then of a strictly graded primary, and afterward 
a grammar school in a large city, knows how 
natural and varied the ungraded school, and how 
artificial seems the graded grammar or primary 
school. How pleasant to change from a class 
of very little ones to the advanced work, and vice 
versa! But such an experience is needed to con- 
firm the pedagogical wisdom of the strictest grad- 
ing, for the work at best in the one school is lam- 
entably fragmentary, and in the graded school 
it is comprehensive, exact, and logically pro- 
gressive. 

There are arguments on both sides of the 
grading question in the Sunday-school, but the 
better way is along the strictest grading and clas- 
sification. The little children may prefer to have 
opening and closing exercises with the main 
school, and some of the older scholars want the 



AND METHODS. 41 

children in sight. But to hold and to help in the 
best way the boy and the ambitious young man, 
we must have every part of the work where they 
are specially adapted to them ; and none the less 
in the case of the girl and the young lady, though 
these are not so difficult to hold. And for the 
smallest child, all the exercises must be childish 
to a degree which older pupils would resent. 

What, then, is the wise system and basis for 
Sunday-school grading? It can not be a simple 
intellectual test in Bible knowledge. The purpose 
of the Sunday-school is to build character or to 
create a new moral and spiritual nature. We re- 
quire a deeper basis than the mental life, and with- 
out any one's invention we have come to the 
simplest and deepest one. 

It is the psychological basis, or the division 
into the stages of a human life. Into these grades 
the schools naturally fall. The child, the boy or 
girl, the youth, and adult manhood, are these 
stages whose names are probably in almost every 
language and known from earliest ages. We have 
learned, in this day, when there is a discriminat- 
ing empirical psychological study of man, not so 
much by a "new psychology," that these divisions 
are strictly scientific, and that upon them we form 
our organized Sunday-schools. Infancy is also 
in the Sunday-school plan, though not in the 
school itself. It is placed upon the Cradle Roll, 
which is conspicuous in many Primary Depart- 



42 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

ments, and remembered by a special prayer in 
the session. 

First grade is childhood for the Primary De- 
partment. In age lines it extends from three to 
about eight or. nine years. It has unique charac- 
teristics, which we will give later. 

Second grade is boyhood and girlhood from 
about nine years to thirteen years, for the next 
department variously called Secondary, Junior, 
and Intermediate. Secondary would probably be 
the best name for this grade. 

Third grade is youth from thirteen to sixteen 
or seventeen years. We shall see how well de- 
fined is this stage also, and how important to give 
to it special treatment. 

Following this are the adult or advanced 
grades, the Normal or Teacher-training Depart- 
ment, and the assembly of Bible-studying men 
and women. Whether we have the one room to 
house all these, or the Akron plan, the separated 
primary plan of building, or the separate depart- 
ment rooms, we may very fully develop this grad- 
ing. In the one room imaginary lines may be 
the divisions, and these designated by placards 
on the walls or upon the seats. With the modern 
building better work may be done, but it is well 
worth grading strictly in the one-room Sunday- 
school, and many fine Sunday-schools of the best 
sort are housed in a single room. 

Let us take, now, the three most distinctive 



AND METHODS. 43 

grades — the child, the boy or girl, and the youth — 
and contrast their characteristics of nature. The 
child is dependent upon others absolutely ; but its 
unique characteristic is, that it enjoys being de- 
pendent. It gladly acknowledges it by the cling- 
ing hand as parent and child walk along the street. 
Would you know when the boy period has come ? 
Hold fast the hand while you walk with him, and 
he pulls away. Take his hand again, and after 
a moment he will resolutely withdraw it. He 
struts ahead, and does not want to be seen hold- 
ing fast to any one's hand. The boy is independ- 
ent in social attitude. Now go to the youth, and 
you will see that, unlike the child, he does not 
like to be dependent, nor, like the boy, to be in- 
dependent, but he holds out his arm for some 
one else to lean upon it ; for his sister, or, prefer- 
ably, for some one else's sister, to lean upon him. 
Take another point of comparison. The child 
is unconscious of sex. He plays with little boys 
or girls equally with pleasure; he wears dresses 
in childhood, and curls down his shoulders, if his 
mother can make curls out of his straight hair, 
which she usually does. Thus throughout child- 
hood ; but when boyhood comes he demands that 
curls come off and dresses go, and is very proud 
of being a boy. He despises girls. One such 
boy wrote the universal boyish estimate of girls 
in his composition : "Girls are always sick. They 
are funny and make fun of boys' hands, and say, 



44 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

'How dirty!' They can't play marbles. I pity 
them, poor things I" And the girls at this period 
return the boys' contempt. The very terms are 
significant of this sex consciousness. We have 
a common term, child, for male or female, in that 
stage; we have a common name, youth, for the 
next period; but here it is sharply defined by 
sex — a male, boy ; a female, girl — and there is 
no common term for this period of life. In youth, 
again, sexes become mutually attractive. 

Once more, see the difference in self-con- 
sciousness. The child is self-unconscious, as we 
see so often in his easy, unembarrassed recitation 
in our Sunday-school entertainments. One little 
child sang the "Holy City" with sweet grace and 
composure. She tripped to the platform, waited 
patiently for the organist to find her piece of 
music, smiled at friends she recognized during 
the four or five minutes she waited, and then sang 
clearly and with not the slightest embarrassment. 
If a young lady had been in her place, how she 
would have trembled during that awful waiting 
time; how the piece of music, the "Holy City," 
would have wavered and almost tumbled over 
before she began to sing ! 

The boy has the beginnings of self-conscious- 
ness, but not so much as to make him careful 
about personal appearance or to be self-conceited. 
This comes in youth, when complete individuality 
asserts itself and a great sense of self-importance 
is developed. 



AND METHODS. 45 

Taking central characteristics only, the child 
is all faith, the boy is all impulsive activity, and 
the youth is all aspiration. But were there time 
it would b° easy to develop six, or even ten, lines 
of clear contrast between the child, the boy and 
girl, and the youth. 

If we study each separately, we see the child 
in mentality with active but untrained percep- 
tions, with very vivid imagination, with no ability 
to reason; in moral character, with every trait 
and habit yet to be formed ; but, spiritually, with 
beautiful faith, attitude of dependence, frankness, 
religiousness. This is the material upon which 
we work in the Primary Department. The teach- 
ers of little people are becoming specialists by 
their thorough child study, and their lessons more 
and more reach perfect adaptation to the child 
mind and soul. 

We see the boy or girl reaching out to self- 
dependence, irrepressibly active in mind, eager to 
learn. Perceptions are now more accurate, mem- 
ory is most active, and there is some reasoning, 
but not skillful. It is the habit-forming period, 
because the soul takes clear self-initiative. So- 
cially there are no close ties nor single friends. 
It is the time for gangs of boys or sets of girls, 
many equally liked. Its greatest characteristic 
is phenomenal activity of body, mind, and soul. 
"The insatiable hunger physically is only an indi- 
cation of a similar hunger in the mind, and the 



46 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

same hunger in the soul." It will take very much 
in every realm to feed and satisfy. This period is 
the richest for teaching and moral effort in the 
whole life. Teachers of boys must be specialists, 
or they fail altogether ; and it is worth a lifetime 
of study and endeavor to teach boys and girls so 
as to hold and to help them. 

Let us now study the youth. He or she is 
then in full personality by self-consciousness. It 
is an aw^ul and perilous time; a time of stress 
and storm, of physical and moral changes amount- 
ing to the revolutionary. The new sense of per- 
sonal power and of dazzling possibility is over- 
whelming. But there are deeper tides of moral 
and spiritual life. It is the day of ideals and lofty 
plans. It is possible to win to Christ and to noble 
living then as never afterward. There is no more 
delicate or difficult spiritual task than to teach 
this stage of life, and the teachers of youth must 
have warm sympathy, intimate knowledge of this 
phase of human nature, a fine character to arouse 
genuine admiration, and genuine ability in Bible 
teaching. 

On these stages we are now grading the Sun- 
day-school, and the simplicity of the scheme 
makes it adaptable everywhere. In the smallest 
school there are children, boys, and youth, and 
these need the specialized care as much, if there 
are only five of grade, as if there are five hundred 
of each. Our work is to make character ; so it is 



AND METHODS. 47 

the material of real nature which we must under- 
stand and work upon. It is this fact that gives 
the chief excellence to this wise grading. 

Mature manhood or womanhood is fully indi- 
vidualized. We must study each by himself or 
herself for our best work. The advanced classes, 
therefore, constitute a problem by themselves, and 
must be set off into a special department. There 
has been extraordinary progress in men's and 
women's Sunday-school classes. The Baraca 
movement, the great single classes everywhere, 
the union of such classes for general helpfulness, 
constitutes a new and wonderful growth of the 
Sunday-school. Its significance in the conquest 
of the world for Christ is very encouraging. 



CHAPTER IV. 

TEACHER TRAINING MADE 
PRACTICAL. 

There is a strange and persistent fallacy 
among Sunday-school workers that earnestness 
is a substitute for knowledge. "What if the 
teacher does not know all the books of the Bible, 
nor even all the details of the life of Christ ; if he 
is deeply earnest he will make an impression !" 
Certainly ! but not such an impression as he would 
like to make. In these days of greatly improved 
teaching in the public school and the college the 
bright boy or girl is keen to recognize ignorance 
and incapacity. Earnestness is essential as the 
right arm of power, but knowledge is the other 
arm whose loss is serious and irreparable. Two 
bright American boys in a little Sunday-school 
were listening to one of the traveling Sunday- 
school speakers of the former days, a man who 
was ignorant but earnest, and who rattled on 
dreary commonplaces of exhortation until he had 
w r orked himself to tears. The boys watched the 
performance with little interest until one of them 
said to his companion, "Say, Jim, what is that 
old fellow crying about?" "Now, you be quiet! 

48 



METHODS. 49 

If you had to stand up there and make a speech, 
and had nothing more to say than he has, you 'd 
cry too!" 

In every other sort of teaching nothing would 
be accepted but knowledge of the subject. Surely 
in the teaching which purposes to make character 
and life we need the supreme teaching power. 
The text-book, the Bible, is the material the Holy 
Spirit uses to convict and convert men, and it is 
a difficult text-book. The time for teaching is a 
half-hour a week, requiring intensity of touch and 
interest to produce a lasting impression. The in- 
creasing pressure and rush of modern life necessi- 
tates greater power to give the Bible a place and 
to hold its place. All this bears down heavily 
upon the teacher's responsibility and requires him 
to be trained and prepared. 

/. What course of training is practicable? 

We have made real progress in defining such 
a course. It would be easy enough to arrange a 
list of pedagogical works desirable to study by 
every teacher for ideal preparation ; and add to it 
a list of Biblical helps equally important ; and an 
original Bible study, analytical and synthetic, 
which is of greatest value; with other lines of 
training. But the great body of Sunday-school 
teachers could not prosecute such a course, and 
the few who have the time to do it would not. So 
that it is necessary to prescribe what will be taken. 

Practical experience has long ago proven that 
4 



50 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

each Sunday-school must provide its own teach- 
ing force and train it. The necessity of training 
it by each school is now being realized; for we 
can not find an adequate number of good teachers 
ready in any Church, however cultured the 
Church may be, or however numerous among its 
people are college graduates or professional men. 
These educated people are not often well informed 
in the Bible nor skilled teachers. They will be 
benefited by a Teacher-training Department more 
richly than others. And such a department in 
every school is as important as the normal schools 
of the State are to the public-school system. Who 
does not remember the days before the normal 
schools when all sorts of teachers were accepted 
for public schools? The inspiration and uplift 
of the normal school is felt in every school-room, 
and no colleges or seminaries could maintain the 
present standard of public-school teaching by 
their graduates if the normal schools were closed. 
Acting again as your reporter, I could describe 
Sunday-schools where a thoroughly organized 
Normal Department of several years' standing 
produces more than the required number of teach- 
ers. In one school every teacher now in the serv- 
ice, about fifty-two, is a graduate of the three 
years' normal course; in another school they are 
able to make it a requirement to be a graduate 
before electing any one to teach; in one school 
there were so many additional graduates that an 



AND METHODS. 5 1 

assistant teacher was assigned to every class to 
act as class secretary, assistant visitor, and sub- 
stitute teacher. The Normal Department is an 
undoubted success in providing teachers, sufficient 
in numbers and greatly improved in teaching 
power. 

Remember, also, that the work of training 
teachers for the Sunday-school is not to furnish 
a complete education. We begin with well-edu- 
cated material as a rule. The men and the women 
selected to take the course or volunteering to do 
so are intelligent, eager to study and knowing 
how to study in most cases, and they need little 
more than suggestions. It is surprising how 
much can be done for prospective teachers in a 
single year's normal study. 

The course of study embraces five subjects, 
and all will be recognized as essential. 

I. Comprehensive Bible Study. The Bible is 
taken as a whole, and its units, which are single 
books, not chapters (except in the Psalms) nor 
verses. These books are classified in a general 
way, and their contents analyzed so that the 
teacher shall have a reasonable command of the 
whole. This is followed by synthetic study of 
the Bible, which takes great subjects like the his- 
tory of the Old Testament, biographical studies, 
the life of Christ, and a score of such topics in 
fullest outline. Next comes a literary study of 
the Bible, carefully noting the variety of literary 



52 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

forms in/ which the message of God is recorded, 
the significance of these forms, their beauty and 
value, and the laws of interpretation for them. 
Logically following this is expository study, 
which takes words and phrases in carefully- 
guarded examination, and seeks for the exact 
meaning of God's Word. All this, duly empha- 
sizing the need of sincerity and spiritual purpose 
in all the study, is a bare outline of comprehensive 
Bible study for normal training. 

2. Next comes a knowledge of Biblical liter- 
ature and helps. The teacher needs to know the 
use of Bible concordances, dictionaries, Bible 
geography, manners and customs, archaeology, 
commentaries, and the vast library of Biblical 
appliances for investigation. Some guidance may 
be given to the best books upon all these subjects. 

3. A study of some of the Laws of Teaching 
as applied to Bible work. To be sure, it is pos- 
sible to give only the most elementary course in 
pedagogy ; but when given in a richly suggestive 
form to eager and intelligent minds, enough is 
secured to be of real value. How to approach the 
mind, how to intensify interest, how to illustrate, 
how to question, and the laws of memory, imagi- 
nation, reasoning, and conscience, are discussed 
and reviewed. 

4. In the same outline form we study human 
nature in untechnical, psychological suggestions; 
the characteristics of the child, the boy or girl, 



AND METHODS. 53 

the youth, individuality, heredity, environment, 
and other formative forces. To many students it 
has become the taste, leading to larger psychologic 
studies of values. Let no one think this is mere 
dabbling into science. It is immensely helpful, 
and it is accurate so far as it goes. 

5. Lastly, it is important to exhibit the Sun- 
day-school organization in its modern develop- 
ment and possibilities. This includes the business 
organization of the school, departmental divisions, 
grading, courses of studies, Home Department, 
Cradle Roll, house-to-house visitation, Decision- 
days, denominational and State and International 
Associations. 

This is the ground now staked out and sought 
to be covered in the teacher-training classes of 
our best Sunday-schools. 

II. How is the Teacher-training Class or De- 
partment started and organized? 

Usually it is found possible to transform an 
interesting adult class into the first teacher-train- 
ing class of the school. Invite into it all persons 
in the Church who desire to fit themselves for 
teaching and for larger Christian service. Make 
it one of the standing invitations and announce- 
ments from the pulpit to call attention to teacher- 
training. At the end of the first year let this orig- 
inal class take up a second year's studies and or- 
ganize another class for the first year. So, also, 
advance each class and organize another at the 



54 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

end of the second year. It will not be easy to in- 
augurate, but it is essential to the best work of 
the Sunday-school, and it can be done by earnest 
effort anywhere, and the teachers secured for 
three years' classes. Then you will have your 
teacher-training department. 

For the teachers in actual service when the 
department is begun there will probably come a 
demand for normal training. It is usually the 
better way to stir up an interest in them for their 
training. For these teachers there is organized 
the Church Bible Institute during the week. The 
same course of studies is pursued, and some little 
time is given to the study of the current Uniform 
Lesson. The division of time in both the Teacher- 
training Department meeting during the Sunday- 
school session and the Institute during the week, 
should be carefully observed. The best in our 
practical experience is about one-third for the In- 
ternational Lesson and two-thirds for the Normal 
Lesson. 

Where there are several Churches in a town 
developing teacher-training a Union Institute may 
be formed. Meeting monthly with larger num- 
bers, it has been found possible to arrange for lec- 
tures by expert Sunday-school leaders and upon 
Biblical studies of great inspiration and value. 
The Sunday-school Union, also, is a correspond- 
ence school for all these Institutes. It answers 
all questions, arranges for examinations upon the 
course, and directs further study. 



AND METHODS. 55 

The Church Bible Institute is designed for 
larger service in training all Christian workers 
in the Church. It will help the interest of its 
specialty for Sunday-school teachers to plan the 
extended work. The lamentable need of workers 
in the preaching and evangelistic meetings, in the 
young people's meetings, in class-leading of a 
better sort, in parental teaching, and in personal 
work for Christ day by day, renders such a 
training-school an imperative need. 

The ideal teacher is Christ. He is the perfect 
example of the teacher of religious truth. In the 
thoroughness of His preparation, in His enthusi- 
asm for Bible study, in His holy character, and 
in every qualification which makes for power in 
teaching, He is supreme. In particular instances 
of teaching, like His lesson at Jacob's well, His 
instruction in Messianic prophecy on the way to 
Emmaus, and His great parables, He shows Him- 
self a master in the teaching art. These and 
other examples furnish the finest illustrations of 
pedagogical principles. Best of all, He exhibits 
the power of the personal factor in all teaching, 
especially in moral and religious instruction. He 
is Himself His own richest Gospel, and He re- 
veals more of God the Father in His spirit and 
acts and character than in all His sayings. He 
is the Light worth most of all for its shining 
when to-day it penetrates into our inmost souls, 
but valuable beyond measure as an example for 
those who also are a light to the world. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LESSON COURSES FOR 
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

We come last to what all recent discussions 
of the Sunday-school have placed first. But les- 
son courses are both first and last in the Bible- 
school; they are unquestionably at least among 
the first things in importance, though not more 
so than is teacher-training or grading or relation 
to the home ; they are last in order of organiza- 
tion. We do not select lesson courses first, and 
then select pupils these courses will suit and 
teachers who can teach them. We determine who 
are the legitimate students to be gathered into 
our Bible-school; we next study the nature of 
these students, and classify them wisely, and then 
survey our supply of teachers to know what they 
may be expected to do. Further, we decide upon 
what we really purpose to accomplish in the Sun- 
day-school, how much is intellectual and educa- 
tional, and how much spiritual and training. And 
after all this development, and only then, we are 
ready to select and adapt Bible lessons for the 
Sunday-school. 

56 



METHODS. 57 

/. What are the fundamental methods of 
treating Bible material for lessons ? 

They are two ; the same for Sunday-school les- 
sons as preachers have found Bible material for 
sermonizing. One is the topical method, which 
uses the Bible passage or text as suggestive of 
the truth or declarative of one or more general 
truths; or which collates several passages sug- 
gestive or illustrative of the truth to be preached. 
Then the preacher or teacher develops it logically 
or rhetorically, to produce the impression desired. 
Topical preaching is a proper and helpful method 
of proclaiming the Gospel. 

The other method of treating Bible material 
is the expository, exegetical, or textual. I need 
not explain that, by this method, the preacher or 
teacher seeks absolutely to follow the exact 
thought of the passage in hand, both in discrimi- 
nating expression and in the very way it is devel- 
oped or illustrated in that particular passage. 

Both of these methods are used in the pulpit, 
and both are necessary to successful lesson courses 
in the Sunday-school. Each method has its ad- 
vantages, the topical giving the breadth and com- 
prehensiveness of Scripture truth ; the expository 
or textual, the exact message and its depth; so 
that we may see that topical and textual methods 
are not antagonistic, but complementary. The 
complete view comes by using both thoroughly 
and with specialized ability. 



58 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

Another survey of these methods shows that 
the topical is educational, and the textual is more 
directly inspirational or spiritual; but here again 
we see that we need both methods, for we are 
seeking both of these results in the Bible-school. 

The International Uniform Lessons are ex- 
pository in their treatment of the text. They fol- 
low somewhat loosely a course of topics, but not 
so fully nor in any sense exhaustively so as to 
change their character from the strictly expository 
or textual of certain selected passages, ten to fif- 
teen verses in length, of the Bible. This is no 
well-grounded objection to these lessons as one 
course for the Sunday-school. Such a series is 
an essential part of a complete Bible study, and 
the selections of the Uniform series are, on the 
whole, as carefully made as any can be. Given a 
purpose to treat the Bible for spiritual helpful- 
ness and to get the exact character and depth of 
the Divine message, and taking the Bible just as 
it is, a miscellaneous collection of historical, bio- 
graphical, ethical, and spiritual writings, any body 
of discriminating Bible teachers would select just 
about such a series of passages for study as the 
International Lesson Committee have given to us. 
It is not strange to spiritually-minded people that 
these lessons have acquired so powerful a perma- 
nent hold upon the Christian world. They are 
based upon a sound philosophy. 

But, once more, considering the Bible as the 



AND METHODS. 59 

peculiarly constructed book it is, we can never 
acquire a broad education in its history, its con- 
tents, its facts and complete system of truth, by 
exposition of small sections in detail. We must 
study it comprehensively in topics arranged in 
logical order as we gather facts from the whole 
Bible. For the education of our scholars in the 
history and contents of the Bible we arrange a 
series of lessons in various courses of a topical 
character. 

As we argued previously from the standpoint 
of the purposes of the Sunday-school, that two 
courses of lessons are necessary, and as a reporter 
gave instances of how completely these purposes 
are achieved by the two lessons a day, so now 
from the standpoint of the nature of the Bible 
and the two methods of treating its material of 
truth, we reach the same conclusion that two les- 
sons are needed. 

77. The Two Lessons at every session of the 
Sunday-school. 

The arrangement practically adopted by many 
schools which, for six, ten, and fifteen years, have 
worked the two lessons, is to give the topical or 
General Bible Lesson first in the session for eight 
or ten minutes, and then turn to the International 
Lesson for twenty, twenty-five, or thirty minutes, 
as the length of the session might permit. Their 
experience shows that the General Lesson grows 
in interest steadily, and requires longer time after 



60 SUNDA Y-SCHOOL ORGANIZA TION 

a while, though the expository lesson demands 
ever more time also. 

777. The Bible as a Text-book. 

The discriminating and trained teacher will 
see, as he takes up his Bible before the class, that 
it is not in the ordinary text-book form. There 
is no advance from the simple to the complex in 
its progress, no orderly sequence in successive 
books, and no easy arrangement for its study or 
recitation. It is a book of marvelous unity and 
harmony, but in its structure it is really a collec- 
tion of many pamphlets or smaller books. It is 
not so difficult, with such a text-book, to select a 
series of brief passages as the International Uni- 
form textual lessons do ; but the difficulty becomes 
very great when topical comprehensive lessons 
are to be planned. 

Holding the Bible in hand, what kind of a 
book to teach is it ? 

First, it is really a library of sacred literature. 
We must therefore study it book by book, taking 
the literary form of each book, its place in the 
sacred history, its peculiar contribution of relig- 
ious truths and revelation to the whole, and its 
geography, manners, and circumstances. 

Secondly, we must remember that the Bible 
is an ancient and an Oriental book. The first line 
of it was written over three thousand years ago, 
the last line eighteen hundred years ago. Much 
of it is plain to the most unlettered, notwithstand- 
ing this ; but to get the full force of some of its 



AND METHODS. 6 1 

great and beautiful passages we must reconstruct 
the ancient times in which it was given, and also 
reconstruct the place and environment of its 
giving. 

Thirdly, we must ever bear in mind that the 
Bible is God's message to men now and here as 
truly as it was His message to men at any time 
and anywhere. It is a present-day book, a book 
of modern life and power. 

Our series of General Lessons, therefore, if 
they are to be most helpful, should cover the con- 
tents of the Bible, and also the geography of Bible 
lands, the manners and customs, the archaeology, 
the ethnology, and related subjects, in helpful 
outline. 

There must also be ethical lessons for present 
moral development of , character. Out of the 
Bible we must teach every cardinal virtue, truth- 
telling, honesty, purity, hospitality, fidelity, cour- 
age, kindness, love. The training of childhood 
in character is the supreme object of Sunday- 
school work, and teachers everywhere are asking 
how it can be done successfully. Surely it can 
not be done by haphazard or left to the chance 
of incidental teaching in connection with other 
lessons. It should be planned for specifically, 
virtue by virtue taught, trained by stimulating 
the right action, and strengthened against temp- 
tation. To train is to get the actual result, and 
only this will be sufficient. 



62 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

Another important topic of the General Les- 
sons will be Church History Lessons. The 
Church of Christ is the richest fruit of Bible reve- 
lation, and we can get new light upon the Bible 
by searching into the movements of the Church, 
her struggles, her successive conquests, her sad 
yielding to worldliness and sin, her reformation 
and growth in holiness and power. The Church 
in the eighteen centuries is full of glorious inspi- 
ration for young and old in the Sunday-school, 
and it is our duty to put them in touch with these 
inspiring events and characters. The Church in 
the nineteenth century, with its wonderful growth, 
its many movements, its unprecedented develop- 
ment of organization, and its world-wide spread, 
has leaders, events, successes, and inspirations 
that should be studied by all. The Sunday-school 
is making Church members for to-morrow, and 
whatever we want in the Church member then, we 
must put into the scholar to-day. So we must 
teach habits of Church attendance, of systematic 
giving, of private and public prayer, of intelligent 
work in the Church. 

Can all this be done in the brief hour of the 
regular Sunday-school session? It is being done 
in large measure in many schools. But it re- 
quires intensified teaching. Eyes and ears both 
must be used. By objects and blackboard, can- 
dles, colors, and all possible skill, let the heart 
and the mind be opened and the truth given with 



AND METHODS. 63 

power. Charts, pictures, stereopticon, intensified 
interest and attention, are now being used in our 
Sunday-schools, and in five minutes, in one min- 
ute, lessons are presented which last for eternity. 

The General or Topical Lessons admit of the 
closest grading. An eight-years' course can be 
planned which begins with the simple easy his- 
tory or story lessons of the Primary Department. 
Then, taking hero lessons for boys and girls, and 
other curious and extremely interesting topics for 
that period of life, we provide for that grade. 
And in similar adaptation for the following de- 
partments a large scope of study is covered. Side 
by side with these is the graded treatment for 
each of the International Lessons. 

I have acted largely as reporter of things 
actually done in our best Sunday-schools, and I 
am glad to close with the statement that this cur- 
riculum here described is actually in use, more 
or less fully, in quite a number of them. It has 
solved the problem of the best Bible course for 
the Sunday-school. It creates enthusiasm for the 
Bible, it makes students of it who pass creditable 
examinations upon its history and contents, and 
it develops the school atmosphere and yet the 
profoundly religious feeling which we desire for 
the Church school of the Bible. 



APPENDIX. 

Illustrative Studies, 



JESUS THE MODEL TEACHER. 

As a teacher Jesus Christ won remarkable 
tributes in His ministry. The two men who, on 
the long walk to Emmaus, received His expo- 
sition of Messianic prophecy, declared that their 
"hearts burned within them while He talked with 
them and opened to them the Scriptures." The 
soldiers whom the Pharisees sent to arrest Him 
were themselves captured by the power of His 
instruction, and came back without Him, saying, 
"Never man spake like this Man." The woman 
of Samaria who heard His story alone on Jacob's 
well forgot her waterpot and ran into the city, 
shouting, "Come see a Man who told me all 
things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?" 
But who can forget the great multitude of men, 
women, and children, five to ten thousand strong, 
who for three days hung upon His words, forget- 
ting home and everything else that they might 
not lose one utterance from those gracious lips? 
We read His teachings and our hearts burn. The 
whole world crowns Him the Prince of all teach- 
ers. The world will not yet call Him Savior, nor 
yet bow in submission to Him as Lord and King. 
Not yet Priest nor King over all, but He is the 
universal Prophet of all thoughtful and serious 

67 



68 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

humanity. Into that crown let us put a star, 
humbly to indicate the five points in which he is 
our model Teacher of religious truth. 

/. In the Fullness and Accuracy of His 
Knowledge of the Scriptures. 

He was the wonder of the Jewish rabbis at 
twelve years of age, Luke tells us. And these 
rabbis were no mean Bible students. Of the 
letter, to be sure, but they studied little else, and 
could not easily be led into such admiration of 
Bible attainments unless there was unusual gen- 
eral knowledge and remarkable penetration. His 
answer to His mother's reproach shows that He 
expected her to have remembered that His en- 
thusiasm for the Scriptures would take Him there 
and keep Him there rather than anywhere else. 
His answer may be rendered : "How is it that ye 
sought Me anywhere else? Wist ye not that I 
must be found in My Father's house ?" 

Christ's discourses everywhere show His inti- 
mate knowledge of the Old Testament. His quo- 
tations are not literal and usually from the Septu- 
agint version, but He knows the law and the 
prophets thoroughly. Without a roll at hand, 
on the way to Emmaus, He began with Moses and 
showed in all the prophets the things concerning 
Himself. The men to whom He talked were 
probably devout Jews, well read in the Word, and 
their testimony is strong. 

There is no point of Christ's example more 



AND METHODS. 69 

important than His enthusiasm for the Bible. 
How can the teacher who dislikes reading the 
Bible inspire any love for it in his scholars ? How 
can ignorance of the Scriptures, joined to indif- 
ference, awaken relish for it? And if it be true 
that the Scriptures are the material the Holy 
Spirit uses in convicting and converting sinners, 
how can that teacher who knows very little of the 
Scriptures, and that little in a slovenly inaccu- 
racy, co-operate with the Spirit? There is no 
escape from it, — we must learn to love the Bible, 
we must acquire enthusiasm for it, to be really 
helpful Sunday-school teachers. 

77. Christ's Unique and Original Method and 
Manner of Teaching. 

He seems thoroughly to have appreciated the 
importance of how to express a truth. It is the 
literary form of an utterance which preserves it 
for immortality, and all of Christ's words had a 
perfection of form in every variety of literary 
expression He used. There was nothing extem- 
poraneous, nothing slipshod, but all thoroughly 
matured and beyond any improvement in all the 
ages. Who can improve the Lord's Prayer ? 
Who can add anything that will make it more 
comprehensive, or omit anything that will not 
sadly mar it? It is a perfect prayer. So simple 
a composition as the Parable of the Sower is be- 
yond all praise for its marvelous simplicity and 
yet penetration into human nature. Charles 



70 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

Dickens is quoted as saying that the Parable of 
the Prodigal Son is the finest story of all liter- 
ature, and Edmund Kean that Christ's sayings 
are deepest of all utterances in pathos. Who can 
ever measure the beneficence inspired by that one 
matchless story of the Good Samaritan? Every 
touch of it is sublime in literary art and finish. 
May it not be that during the eighteen years from 
His visit to Jerusalem until His public ministry 
He went over and over His messages, perfecting 
their form and manner, so that when He uttered 
them in such beauty and variety all the nation 
stood still to listen ? 

Here, again, is a most vital factor in teaching 
success. "How" is equally important with 
"what," we say. Many teachers simply gather 
much material, and do not organize it nor form 
a plan of teaching. They wonder why they fail 
to interest their scholars, but the point of gaining 
attention is always in the manner and form of our 
utterance. Teachers, to be powerful, must put 
truth into attractive dress and give it wings of 
best possible expression. 

777. Christ was the Modei Teacher in His 
Intuition of Principles and Laws of the Teaching 
Process. 

His teaching is admired beyond all praise by 
scientific pedagogy to-day as furnishing the finest 
illustrations of its principles. He knows how to 
gain access to minds with infinite skill; He illus- 



AND METHODS. 7 1 

trates with perfection from commonest objects of 
every-day life; He can question most keenly, 
striking confusion into cavilers and illuminating 
the perplexed ; and there is not a law of teaching* 
which He does not use and illustrate*. Froebel 
declares that he learned his profound principles 
from Jesus of Nazareth ! His lesson to the wo- 
man of Samaria is a remarkable model of how 
to approach a soul, how to open into spiritual 
truth, how to meet objections and to win convic- 
tion. His conversation with Nicodemus is 
equally skillful to pedagogic critical view, and His 
conversation with the two men on the way to 
Emmaus is the delight of the scientific professor 
of pedagogy. 

IV. Christ's Holy and Heroic Character is the 
fourth point of our star of perfection. 

He was the truth incarnate, the way to the 
Father in living reality. He was a greater Gospel 
than any He ever spoke. That Man behind the 
word not only gave it power, but a dazzling illumi- 
nation and a heavenly sweetness. Who can ever 
describe the character power of that Teacher? 
His love was a passion for humanity, His purity 
was radiant, His indignation against selfishness 
terrific, His pity for sinners a wonder, His breadth 
of sympathy immeasurable ! 

The personal factor in teaching is paramount. 
The Word of God must again be made flesh and 
dwell among men if it is to save and to uplift. 



72 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

"How can I hear what you say when what you 
are thunders in my ears?" said Emerson in his 
startling and characteristic way. Let our Sunday- 
school teachers learn that it is not enough to be 
negatively good. Their goodness must be radi- 
ant, electric, leavening the class. There are 
teachers who complain of the shortness of the 
time in teaching, "only half an hour a week out 
of one hundred and sixty-eight hours." But if 
behind the half-hour is a holy and heroic char- 
acter, that half-hour is the sharp end of a wedge 
of which the larger end is the mighty influence of 
goodness and earnestness, which drives the wedge 
into the life, and splits off indifference, and opens 
a way for Christ! Five minutes is long enough 
to transform eternity when a Christlike man 
uses it. 

So Christ's lessons were perfect. It is a very 
good lesson which is easy to remember; but 
Christ's lessons are impossible to forget, and this 
is a perfect lesson. 

V. Our fifth point of the Star of Christ's 
Power as a Teacher is His Intimate Knowledge 
of Human Nature. 

Froebel says that no one ever knew childhood 
as Christ did. How far behind His teachings of 
the spiritual status of the child are the plans and 
conceptions of the Church ! A generation of close 
study of Matthew's eighteenth chapter would 
yield the richest harvest of Church members the 



AND METHODS. 73 

Church ever gathered, and would advance Christ's 
final triumph perhaps a thousand years. How 
well Christ saw the vile woman and the hardened 
sinner, and what depths of psychologic study are 
in His parables! 

He knew what was in man. Here, too, He 
has become an inspiring model to the multitudes 
who now are child-study observers, and who take 
the "New Psychology" as one part of their 
teacher-training. 

This is the star we humbly place in His crown 
of supremacy as a teacher. Greater than all be- 
fore Him or since is He among all who ever 
opened their mouths to instruct in righteousness. 
I went up Pike's Peak with a great company of 
young Christians. As we ascended, the landscape 
broadened, and to the eastward and westward a 
wonderful panorama of God's handiwork spread 
out, so that with awe we joined in the song, 
"Nearer, my God, to Thee!" and seemed to be 
lifted to stand beside Him and gaze upon His 
works. But more wonderful was my lesson about 
Christ. I saw great mountains as we began our 
ascent, and I asked, "Which of these is Pike's 
Peak ?" "None of them !" said the guide ; "they 
are only foothills." A few miles farther I saw 
other lofty mountains. "Which of these is the 
Peak ?" "None !" scornfully ; "they also are only 
foothills." Again we ascend mile after mile until 
at length there rises that gigantic pile of granite, 



74 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

bare on his crown, with a dash here and there of 
snow, and we all knew it was Pike's Peak. So 
we study the wondrous men of the Bible. Is 
Abraham the Pike's Peak of the Bible ? Is Moses 
or Isaiah ? No ! they are only foothills, grand and 
lofty as they are. Are John and Paul the Pike's 
Peak ? No ! they also are foothills. But now we 
have reached that awe-inspiring height, and it is 
Jesus, the summit of all ages and all men. He is 
the Pike's Peak of the Bible. 



HOW TO PRESENT THE CHRIST TO A 
BIGOTED AND SINFUL HEART. 

A Pedagogic Study of Christ Teaching at 
Jacob's Weu,. 

(John iv, 4-42.) 

One pupil only is in the class, and there is 
only one lesson. The meeting was accidental, as 
men would view it, and intense bigotry separates 
pupil from teacher. A very wicked life also, still 
continued, seems an insuperable barrier to any 
good result. But really wonderful results follow 
the lesson ; the one scholar is not only saved, but 
made a missionary and saves many others. 

How is it done? From a teacher's critical 
view, what are the steps of the instruction the 
great Teacher gives ? 

/. He asks the pupil to do him a favor. 

It is the ready entrance to any heart to request 
a small but important service. It is more blessed 
to give than to receive. It puts the pupil into 
the pleasant attitude of a benefactor at a trifling 
cost of effort. Teachers less familiar with human 
nature think they can win by themselves doing 
a favor to their pupils ; but this, while pleasing 
to the teacher, is uncomfortable to the other. It 

75 



76 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

was the genius of Jesus which put the pleasant 
feeling on the other side. 

The wise teacher continues to put himself 
under obligations to his class by asking ever larger 
favors, but still not irksome nor too difficult to 
grant. He thus intensifies the pleasant feeling 
with which the class, as benefactors to him, will 
ever regard him. 

Why is there so much complaint among us of 
base ingratitude of those we have helped and 
loaded with benefits? Why do we wonder that 
they turn from us so readily; that they .say so 
little about our many gifts and favors ? Saddest 
of all is it to see the children of aged parents turn 
from them, though those parents poured good 
things upon them from childhood, never wanted 
anything in return, and were always giving, giv- 
ing! Do we not see that those who receive are 
made uncomfortable, that they feel humiliated, 
and that to them it is almost a necessity for self- 
respect to forget the gifts? Christ's first act of 
teaching was to get His pupil into a delighted at- 
titude to Him. 

II. He grants a still more pleasant opportunity 
to give to the pupil. 

This is intellectual outgiving. By so much as 
the mind is loftier and more wonderful than ma- 
terial things, by so much is giving information to 
another more delightful than giving money or 
other things. So He who could speak as never 






AND METHODS. 77 

man spake, and who could make men's hearts 
burn within them at His words, now permitted 
the woman to talk, to ask questions, to interrupt 
with self-important assertions. But all this 
opened her heart and mind to what He had to 
say to her. And it gave Him the measure of her 
mind and of her spiritual nature. To let her talk 
was making the diagnosis of her religious con- 
dition for Him. But, above all, it kept her in the 
pleasant attitude so vital to a reception of the 
truth He had for her. 

The pleasure of giving in contrast with re- 
ceiving is intensified many-fold in the realm of 
the intellectual life. The good preacher enjoys 
giving an hour and a half's discourse; indeed, 
every gesture and every tone of his voice shows 
how highly he enjoys it; but his audience may 
have enough with half an hour. What is a pop- 
ular definition of "bore?" One who loves to 
talk about himself to you when you would like to 
talk to him about yourself. 

777. Christ took what interested her rather 
than what might more especially interest Him. 

She seemed to lead the conversation. He 
brought His Gospel into her world ; but how won- 
derfully at every point He easily brought it in! 
He asks for the material water, but he offers the 
living and everlasting draught of spiritual re- 
freshing. He hears her flippant question, an- 
swers it with a flood of light into her soul, then 



78 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

helps her out of her guilty confusion so kindly. 
See the skill of leading this darkened and sinful 
soul back and forth, then deeper and deeper into 
the truth, until He had brought that profound 
longing down in her nature, beneath all its de- 
pravity, for the Messiah into expression. Then, 
in what must have been a moment never to be 
forgotten by her, He looked at her with ineffable 
kindness, and with thrilling and all-convincing 
directness He said, "I that speak unto thee am 
He." 

IV. We may not overlook the teaching value 
of getting expression of her religious longings 
from her own lips. 

Christ puts unusual value upon expression by 
man. "For this saying" — or, as we would phrase 
it, "for saying this" — He told the Syrophenician 
woman He would heal her daughter. Because 
she confessed Him before the disciples as the 
object of her remarkable faith, He gave her what 
she wanted. Jesus hinges His acknowledgment 
of us before the Father upon our confession of 
Him before men. We may believe this is not an 
arbitrary requirement, but a psychological and 
spiritual necessity to real fitness for heaven. 
Every teacher knows that expression by the pupil 
is necessary to complete impression by the teacher, 
and who can tell but that expression of our faith 
before men, and confession of our love to Christ 
in public, are essential to the maturing of that 



AND METHODS. 79 

faith and love? In experience every soul knows 
what a strange forward leap is made when the 
confession or the profession of faith is out. 

V. Christ's first contact with a Samaritan. 

We have, therefore, also an illustration of how 
He could penetrate national and religious preju- 
dices. The bitterness of these feelings between 
Jews and Samaritans is well known. How did 
Jesus overcome the woman's hatred and suspicion 
of the Jew, and open her mind and heart to His 
message? The point of vital difference between 
the two religions is stated by her to be what it 
truly was, a contention as to whether Mount Geri- 
zim or Jerusalem was the real place of worship 
or of Divine manifestation. Now, if Jesus had 
maintained the Jewish side, "J erusa l em and Jeru- 
salem only/' the woman would have stood im- 
movably for Mt. Gerizim. But He gave up Jeru- 
salem, and revealed God as manifesting Himself 
in spirit and in truth; that is, everywhere. The 
prejudices she supposed Him to hold went down, 
and hers fell at once. The principle of action is 
that when we can find the higher common relig- 
ious ground, prejudices vanish and all faiths are 
one. By this method of Christ we can open the 
hearts of Roman Catholics. Accentuate the deep 
Christian truth we hold in common with them, 
and they are attentive and open-hearted. In the 
same way the wise missionary finds beneath the 
follies and depravities of paganism a common 



80 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

spiritual truth, and immediately all hearts are ac- 
cessible. 

First, then, discover our own prejudices. We 
cling to some as Protestants, as Methodists, as 
Americans. Down with all of these, and the 
prejudices of the other side collapse. There is no 
sacrifice of truth by the great Teacher, but the 
discovery of a deeper truth, in this method. 

Jesus knew the Samaritan as a type of char- 
acter, but He knew also the force of individual- 
ity. But the type is larger than individuality in 
most people, and it is safe to approach a soul 
always from the side of its well-known type. 
Then we may, as Christ did, diagnose for the 
individual traits and temperament. First the 
racial, the sectional, or the sectarian must be met. 

VI. We see Christ reaching the unknown by 
the known. 

In this law of teaching He is supreme. It is 
proof of the thoroughness of His knowledge of 
the spiritual that He so confidently uses the natu- 
ral to teach it. Water leads to spiritual grace, 
the running, bubbling spring to the living inner 
supply, and so throughout all His conversation. 
It is a prerequisite to power in teaching by illus- 
tration from nature that we know the spiritual 
truth very definitely and fully. Then we shall 
know what it is like in material things. 

VII. Christ shows the power of a fezv well- 
chosen words. 



AND METHODS. 8 1 

At every point He had just the penetrating 
and comprehensive utterance that sent the truth 
home. Here is the touch of the Master teacher 
throughout, and the value of discriminating, accu- 
rate, and graphic expression of truth. 

VIII. He uses the element of surprise effect- 
ively. 

Surprise has real teaching value to old and 
young. The statements Jesus made about what 
He could give the woman if she asked Him were 
in the realm of the marvelous, and as she ques- 
tioned further He deepened the mystery. Then, 
when she apparently sneered at it, He showed a 
greater wonder in His intimate knowledge of her 
guilty life. Wonder upon wonder rolled upon 
her until it was all explained in the revelation 
of His Messiahship. 

The Sunday-school teacher should not fear 
to excite wonder. Show the wonders of God's 
works in nature, the wonders of man's own na- 
ture, the world upon world of wonders in which 
we live ! Lead from these, as Jesus did, to the 
mysteries of grace and salvation. A mind and 
heart is open-eyed when wonderful things are set 
forth. 

Thus the model Teacher knocked at the door 
of a bigoted and sinful heart. Thus He gained 
admission, and, entering, put His own passion 
for souls into the new disciple. For she left her 
water-pot and ran into the city preaching the 
6 



82 SbND AY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

new-found Messiah to all the people; and they 
filled the valley, as they came to Him, until, after 
a few days, they also believed, not only because 
of her word, but because they had heard and seen 
Him themselves, and knew indeed that He was 
the Christ, the Savior of the world. 



HOW TO CLEAR UP THE TRUTH TO 

PERPLEXED AND DOUBTING 

DISCIPLES. 

A Pedagogic Study op v Christ Teaching on 
the Way to Emmaus. 

(IyUke xxiv, 13-32.) 

From Christ's position as Teacher there were 
two questions to be settled to determine the pre- 
cise method of teaching. First, who were these 
persons walking to Emmaus, or what was their 
attitude to His Gospel ? What was their spiritual 
condition? If they were bigoted and sinful like 
the woman of Samaria, there would have been 
one method of reaching them ; as disciples already, 
but perplexed and in despair, a very different 
method is necessary. 

Secondly, what purpose had Christ in this les- 
son He gave to them? It was not primarily to 
present His Gospel or Himself to them. They 
were believers, or had been until the strange 
events of His crucifixion had swept with over- 
whelming doubts over them. His purpose, there- 
fore, unquestionably was to explain these events, 
and clear away their doubt and despair. Not so 
much to present salvation to them, nor to reveal 

83 



84 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

Himself, but to present the truth of His sacri- 
ficial death and glorious resurrection. 

/. It was necessary to conceal His personality. 

This was a situation in which the Word of 
God must become central and unobstructed. It 
must come as God's message only, with an in- 
sistent "Thus saith the Lord." This sort of teach- 
ing should be the rule with believers. Not what 
I, the teacher, think or say ; not my appeal to be 
holy or full of faith; not my experience now of 
these matters; but, entirely hiding myself, the 
Lord's message, His appeal, and the power of 
His Word. 

A teacher of little skill, coming into the place 
Christ then occupied as He met these sorrowing 
men, would instantly have relieved their trouble 
by joyously declaring, "I am Jesus ! I have really 
risen from the dead !" But He would have missed 
forever that unequaled opportunity of exalting 
the ancient Scriptures. After revealing Himself 
anything He might say about the prophets or the 
law would have seemed tame. It must not make 
any difference who it is that is now teaching the 
Word. The Word only must be studied. So al- 
ways where a great truth is paramount. It is 
impertinent to intrude the teacher's or the preach- 
er's personality or to exploit his notions. 

II. But, then, above all is shown the power of 
a knowledge of the Scriptures. 

Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He 



AND METHODS. 85 

expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the 
things concerning Himself. He traversed the 
whole course of Messianic prophecy, beginning 
doubtless with that germ of the whole Gospel, 
the promise in Eden, and giving expositions and 
fulfillment step by step. How wonderful the 
flow of that thought which had burned in Christ's 
heart from His boyhood, and now burned in the 
hearts of the men slowly walking, one on each 
side, with Him to the little village ! We do not 
have that discourse preserved to us, nor any con- 
siderable portion of Christ's thinking upon Mes- 
sianic prophecy. But so powerfully did the 
teaching set forth the Scriptures that never once 
did they think about the Teacher. It was as if an 
impersonal voice, or the voice of one wholly in- 
visible, were speaking to them the words of God. 
This required marvelous self-control by the 
Teacher, and a rich and accurate knowledge of 
the Bible, so that, without hesitating a moment 
for the next step, and without feeling for a mo- 
ment a personal pride in His superior knowl- 
edge — for either of these would have drawn at- 
tention to Himself — He proceeded to the door 
of the house they were about to enter. 

There they looked at Him for a moment, but 
only to beg He would abide with them, and they 
saw Him only dimly under the powerful spell 
of the vision of God's truth He had unrolled be- 
fore them. 



86 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

III. Like the perfect Teacher He is, He wisely 
mingled their recitation with His instruction. 

They, and not He, related the events which 
had just happened. He questioned them fully 
concerning their sorrow, and into His evidently 
sympathetic ear they poured the wonderful story. 
He seemed to be a stranger in Jerusalem, and 
wholly unacquainted with these events, so they 
told Him everything in fullest details. 

What was His purpose as a Teacher in secur- 
ing this recital by them? To make it stand out 
in utmost clearness, as it would to them if they 
exerted themselves mentally to conceive it most 
definitely and to express it to one knowing noth- 
ing of these things. He could have told it to them 
immeasurably better, but the mental activity of 
giving attention is far less than that required to 
express the same thing. So, as a Teacher, He 
put their minds into most intense activity. They 
recited their lesson to Him, aroused by Him in a 
most skillful way. 

Then to this course of events they gave Him, 
He fitted the prophecies which these events ful- 
filled. Thus He exhibits the due balance of reci- 
tation and instruction which produces the best 
result. 

IV. Psychologically He awaited the awaken- 
ing interest in them which would afford the best 
opportunity for His teaching. 

He planned to have them review the whole 



AND METHODS. 87 

matter to Him, to awaken within them a sort of 
interest they then lacked. Their sorrow and de- 
spair had become deadening to higher thought. 
They would have listened quite differently to His 
lesson of prophecy if He had at once started upon 
it. It was when He listened to all their recital 
without at all feeling their sorrow, and aroused 
them to give every shocking or despairing cir- 
cumstance, and yet saw nothing to be discouraged, 
that they opened their eyes in wonder and their 
hearts very eagerly to follow His triumphant 
march through the Scriptures. 

So many of us teachers prepare ourselves, but 
we forget that it is equally important to prepare 
our scholars before we give the truth. We pour 
it in upon unawakened souls, rattle away warmly 
because it interests us, but we have done nothing 
to make it interest our scholars. 

V . But now the time had come when He might 
add the personal factor to the lesson. 

The truth had been nailed fast, and it would be 
clinched by revealing Himself. But note how it 
was done — in the act of breaking bread, which, 
perhaps, He did and had always done in a pecul- 
iarly beautiful way, they saw their Master for a 
moment, and then He vanished away. His way 
of breaking bread, how it would recall a multi- 
tude of wonderful events, all of them strengthen- 
ing the impression His teaching had made! It 



88 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

was a way of adding His personality to His les- 
son as remarkable as anything that had occurred. 
The counterpart of this revelation of Christ 
after His Bible lesson is in our addition of per- 
sonal experience to the exposition of the truth. 
Let it be done with brevity, skill, and concentrated 
power, in a flash if possible, as Christ revealed 
Himself at that humble supper table in Emmaus. 



PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PARABLE OF 
THE SOWER. 

A Study of Matthew XIII. 

The: human nature which is included in the 
Parable of the Sower is all under the Gospel ; let 
us say, all more or less in attendants upon the 
Church and the Sunday-school. Indeed, the 
whole parable may not unfairly describe a real 
Sunday-school class and the results of the teach- 
er's sowing and cultivating. 

Those unreached by the Word, those opposed 
to the Gospel, and the utterly unbelieving are the 
tares of the next parable ; but here we are looking 
through Christ's eyes entirely upon hearers of the 
Word. This constitutes a study of human na- 
ture of vital importance. 

/. We can not hold, as is usually done, that 
these classes of hearers are unalterably fixed in 
the conditions described. 

Character tends to a fixed condition ; but it is 
a hope everywhere inspired by the Gospel that 
the power of the Holy Spirit can break to pieces 
the hardest nature and transform the worst heart. 
The wayside is trodden very hard, but there are 
plowshares of truth or of Providence that cut 

89 



Sunday-school organization 



through it and make it fertile once more; the 
stone beneath the thin soil is great and hard, but 
not impossible to blast to pieces or to remove; 
the thorn-crowded part of the field is not hope- 
less, for God has many workers with willing hands 
to remove the thorns, or, more strictly, He can 
bring to bear many influences that will make room 
for the truth. Doubtless these kinds of soil will 
become permanent if left alone, but Sunday-school 
teachers are set apart not to let things alone. The 
good teacher sees in the hard path, the shallow 
soil, the thorny part, an exhortation to use more 
skillful means, more powerful agencies, to break 
up and clear away obstacles to the truth. 

II. We have then, more probably, an exhibit 
of the character of the obstacles to the truth. 

Not insuperable obstacles, but very real and 
to be provided for in our methods of work in 
teaching the Word of God. 

These obstacles here mentioned are wholly in 
the scholar. All obstacles finally lodge there, of 
course. But the very character of these descrip- 
tions shows that the source of many of them may 
be the teacher who is unfaithful or careless. He 
may contribute to the procession which tramples 
down the tenderness the heart had in childhood. 
He may be responsible for the hardening from 
beneath which produces the sadly superficial soul. 
He may sow some of the thorns which crowd out 
the wheat he also tries to sow. 



AND METHODS. 9 1 

However, this story Jesus gives us shows that 
finally all obstacles get into the scholar's heart, 
whatever their origin. And it is there we now 
study them. 

777. First, the unresponsive scholar. 

He is outwardly hardened to the truth. He 
is not moved by it in any perceptible way, does 
not manifest any conviction or sympathy, nor 
show signs of yielding to it. He is often deeply 
interested intellectually, and may be quite regular 
in attendance. But a procession of evil thoughts, 
sinful plans and purposes, Satanic impulses, 
throng his soul. Vile companionships, all the 
more hardening because some of them are out- 
wardly respectable, vile books, vile pictures and 
theatricals, and foul ideals trample, trample, 
trample every inch of tenderness out of the nature. 

And there are things hardening which are 
not so bad morally. That merciless selfishness 
which is so sadly common, that unholy ambition 
for mere power, that insatiable throng of thoughts 
and feelings entirely without God, will destroy 
receptivity for the Gospel. 

Fortunately the wayside does not harden down 
very deeply. Just beneath may be rich soil, and 
this is the teacher's problem. How to strike into 
the depths beneath the hard crust; what organ- 
izing of the lesson truth will surprise, cut into 
more deeply, tear up the hard-beaten nature. 

Let us observe the keenness of Christ's knowl- 



92 Sunday-school organization 

edge of human nature here. This is a soul not 
hardened from within so much as from without, 
It is a type easily recognized. Perhaps in environ- 
ment which trampled all the tenderness down. 
Hardened, not because He willed and planned, 
but because He was wronged thus by others. 

IV. Secondly, the superficial nature. 

He also is hardened, but it is from beneath, 
from within. Probably the history of this nature 
is that He ceased to use the depths of His motives 
and purposes, and these depths atrophied. Deal- 
ing with trivialities, He ruffled only the surface of 
things, and His nature became superficial. The 
profound feelings which characterize the child- 
hood give way to petty foibles, little and shallow 
emotions, and all becomes shallow. This nature 
is easily moved. A slight inconvenience makes 
Him very unhappy, and a petty pleasure gives 
Him great delight. 

How perplexing to the Teacher is such a mem- 
ber of His class ! What can be done ? Again, let 
us note the keenness of Christ's insight. It is a 
stony depth. Only the most heroic and almost 
terrific measures will accomplish any change. 
How wise in the Master not to permit us to be 
misled by the easy-going acceptance of the truth 
by these shallow souls ! Almost immediately they 
respond, but how small are the opposing forces 
which overthrow these souls! Here are the 
chronic backsliders and seekers over and over. 



AND METHODS. 93 

For these we need not tenderness, but very heroic 
measures, while always manifestly loving them. 

V. Thirdly, the preoccupied souk 

Even the young people of our Sunday-school 
classes are "very busy," "have too many engage- 
ments to come to Church meetings," "can not 
really find time for Christian work." As life be- 
comes more strenuous, these thorn-crowded na- 
tures become more numerous, and are found at 
younger stages of life. What are these cares and 
riches of life? Crowding, ambitious business 
cares, large plans for accumulating money, social 
engagements, sports, pleasures of life. 

Why call all these thorns ? Business and cer- 
tain social engagements are not sinful in them- 
selves ; but when apart from serving God and 
crowding upon God's service, they are thorns, 
thorns ! They have no outcome of real joy or 
satisfaction, nor of lasting good. 

VI. Comprehensive classification of hin- 
drances. 

These three, hardened from without, atrophied 
from beneath, overcrowded with cares, comprise 
all the types of human nature who do not profit 
by the Gospel. They are the unresponsive, the 
fickle, the purely worldly scholars. To ordinary 
effort these will not yield any fruit. But they are 
the opportunity for the specially trained teacher ; 
for the man of power in the Scriptures ; for the 
teacher filled with the Spirit, the genuine lover of 



94 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

men. To him some of these unfavorable char- 
acters will yield, and be regenerated and recon- 
structed. 

The good soil varies in fruitfulness, some 
thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold. 
These degrees of fruitfulness may, at least in part, 
be due to the more or less absence of the hin- 
drances of hardening, thinness of soil, or over- 
crowding ; in some part, to the skill and power of 
the teacher. The seed is the Word of God, and 
is always perfect; but it is the province of the 
teacher to select how much and what of that seed 
to plant in a particular soil, and by the wisdom 
of this selection come greater and greater results. 



DIAGRAM OF THE GRADED SUNDAY- 
SCHOOL. 



The Primary 
Department 



The 
Main School 



ist Section— The Cradle Roll— Under three years of age. 
2d Section— The Beginners— F rorn three to six years of 

age. 
3d Section— The Upper Primary— From six to eight or 

nine years of age. 

(Secondary 
ist Grade* «< Boys and Girls 
{Junior 



2d Grade 



( Intermediate 
< Young People 
yor Youth. 



7 From about nine (or eight) 
j to twelve years of age. 

1 From about twelve to about 
f fifteen years of age. 



3d Grade -J Senior 



From about fifteen 
of age upward. 



years 



ment 



The Advanced 
School 



2d Division— Aforwa/ Depart- 
ment 



f Adults studying the reg- 

and General Parallel I,es- 
[ sons for adults. 

Studying regular Uniform 
Lessons, and also a Nor- 
mal Course. Depart- 
ment composed of adults, 
but bright young people 
of eighteen may be ad- 
mitted if they agree to 
pursue the Normal 
Course, say of three years. 
Department may be sub- 
divided into three sec- 
tions— 1st year, 2d year, 
3d year. 

{Both divisions of the Advanced School meet during the regular session of the 

Sunday-school) 

Composed of those who can not or will not attend the reg- 
ular sessions of the Sunday-school, but who will give 
thirty minutes a week to the study of the regular Un- 
iform Lessons. 

Meeting some day or evening during the week. 
Composed of all who will attend or will pursue the course 

of study. 
- The course of study should include general Biblical study, 

the principles of pedagogy, and other matters that may 

be specially valuable to those who are or may become 

Sunday-school teachers. 



The Home 
Department 



The Church 
Bible Institute 

or 
Teacher-Train- 
ing Institute 



*If desired, and convenient arrangements can be made, this grade may be made 
a separate department. In such a case the main school would have two grades — the First, 
or Junior, Grade ; and the Second, or Senior, Grade. 



95 



A STUDY IN STATISTICS OF ONE 
GREAT DENOMINATION. 

[From the Sunday-school Union Manual.] 

A Grand Army. — The grand total of Meth- 
odist Episcopal Sunday-schools for 1903 reaches 
32,706^2 schools, 354,720 officers and teachers, 
2,806,337 scholars — a vast army of 3,161,057. 

Increase. — This is a gratifying increase of 
316 schools, 3,318 officers and teachers, 47,908 
scholars. In the Home Department there was an 
extraordinary increase of nearly 18 per cent, or 
18,138 new readers of the Sunday-school lessons 
in the Home. 

Conversions. — A great number of conversions 
is reported, 127,386. The record upon this sub- 
ject, the central purpose of the Sunday-school, is 
full of inspiration for the past four years : Con- 
versions in 1900, 123,735; i n 1901, 127,540; in 
1902, 130,729; in 1903, 127,386. This brings us 
to a wonderful total of 509,390, or more than 
half a million souls brought to Christ from our 
Sunday-schools during the quadrennium. 

Average Attendance. — The average attend- 
ance of the Sunday-school is a test of its efficiency 
and general attractiveness. It is very encourag- 
ing, therefore, to see that the increase in average 

96 



METHODS. 97 

attendance is 61,834, which is considerably greater 
than the increase in total membership, which is 
51,226. The percentage of average attendance 
is about 55. This ought to be and could be raised 
to 75 per cent by a strenuous following up of ab- 
sentees. Visits and letters do it in many schools, 
and who can measure the increase in usefulness 
and power of our Sunday-schools if this larger 
attendance became general ? It would mean half 
a million more people in the school every Sunday. 

Compared with the Sunday-school World. — 
The total Protestant Church membership in the 
United States is now about 19,250,000; the total 
Sunday-school enrollment is about 14,000,000. 
This gives the Sunday-school about 73 per cent 
as many as the Church membership. In the 
Methodist Episcopal Church we have 3,161,057 
Sunday-school people to 3,029,560 Church mem- 
bers, making the proportion in favor of the Sun- 
day-school of 104 per cent as against 73 per cent, 
the average of Protestant Churches as a whole. 
We have thus a little less than one-fourth of the 
total Sunday-school enrollment, though we have 
less than one-sixth of the Church membership of 
Protestantism in America. 

What in Some Conferences. — This is encour- 
aging, but the achievements of some single Con- 
ferences show how much better is possible. The 
Newark Conference has 106 per cent compared 
with its Church membership; the New Jersey, 

7 



98 Sunday-school organization 

no; New England, in; Central Pennsylvania, 
113; Wilmington, 119; California, 121; Genesee, 
123; Baltimore, 123; Philadelphia, 127; Colorado, 
128; Rock River, 128; Detroit, 130; Northern 
Minnesota, 137; East Maine, 141; East German, 
145 ; Puget Sound, 148 ; and Dakota, 151. Switz- 
erland is still far ahead, with 21,851 Sunday- 
school people to 9,000 Church members, a propor- 
tion of 241 per cent ! 

The Field Outside. — Only 18 per cent or less 
of the population of the United States is yet in the 
Sunday-school. Some entire States have reached 
nearly 25 per cent, some counties 60 per cent, and 
some towns as high as 80 per cent of their popu- 
lation in their Sunday-schools. By a general 
movement to increase our members, with some of 
the energy certain schools show, we could add one 
million new scholars in a year. If every three 
now enrolled would only bring one in the whole 
year this could be done. 

Marvels of Growth. — There were twenty-eight 
Sunday-schools in the Church, with more than a 
thousand total membership each, in 1901 ; there 
were thirty-five such large schools in the Church 
in 1902; and the number has now increased to 
forty-five schools of more than one thousand. 
The growth of many of these great schools is 
equally remarkable. Think of adding 325, 365, 
442, 450, 651, 750 in a single year, as six of these 
schools respectively have done! Of these thou- 



AND METHODS. 99 

sand membership schools eight ar*e in Philadel- 
phia; seven in Brooklyn, a gain of one; four in 
Chicago, a gain of one ; one in New York ; three 
in Camden, N. J., a gain of one. The rest are in 
smaller cities. Two schools are beyond two thou- 
sand, and one beyond three thousand enrollment. 
Two of these large schools — Bainbridge Street, 
Philadelphia, and Sharp Street, Baltimore — are 
among the colored people. The detailed report 
for the present year will be found specially inter- 
esting. 

Christlike Ideal for Growth. — Some of these 
great Sunday-schools are working to reach every 
man, woman, and child in their field ; not so much 
to increase numbers by several hundred, but to 
be sure that not one soul is passed by without the 
Gospel, not one little one neglected. They have 
very thorough plans for going out into every 
street and into every home with earnest effort to 
bring them in, thus realizing the Christlike ideal 
to "Go preach My Gospel to every creature, teach- 
ing them to observe all things whatsoever I have 
commanded you." 

There is a great surprise in our foreign mis- 
sion Sunday-schools. Their growth during the 
past few years has been remarkable. Here is a 
list of the largest Methodist Episcopal Sunday- 
schools in our missions : 

First Church, Kristiania, Norway 850 enrolled. 

Vejle, Denmark 696 " 

Emanuel, Gothenburg, Sweden 661 " 



LofC. 



IOO SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

St. Paul, Stockholm, Sweden 586 enrolled. 

Bethel, Norkoping, Sweden 582 

Foochow, China 540 

Second Church, Berlin, Germany 460 

Valparaiso, Chili 441 

Calcutta (English), India 391 

Upsala, Sweden, two schools together, 875 

In Frederickstadt, Norway, there is a Home 
Department numbering" 145 members. 

Our Largest Home Department. — The most 
rapid growth in Sunday-school work continues to 
be in that providential extension of Bible study 
into the home, the Home Department. Surely 
nowhere else can the Sunday-school do a work 
so far-reaching! A Home Department number- 
ing one hundred and fifty readers, and vigorously 
maintained, is a notable achievement in any 
Church. It will promote home co-operation with 
Sunday-school work in many ways. From Con- 
ference statistics and later direct reports we have 
the following of one hundred and seventy-five or 
over: Central, Wilkesbarre, 536; Bushwick Ave- 
nue, Brooklyn, 525; First Church, Los Angeles, 
426 ; Lakeville, N. Y., 403 ; Washington, la., 360 ; 
Brazil, Ind., 300 ; Motleys, Va., 300 ; Wells Island, 
N. Y., 285; West Washington, Pa., 274; Park 
Avenue, Somerville, Mass., 262; Fremont Street, 
Gloversville, N. Y., 258 ; Marietta, O., 245 ; Boyle 
Heights, Los Angeles, Cal., 235; Elm Park, 
Scranton, 230; First Church, Sharon, Pa., 228; 
St. Paul's, Cedar Rapids, la., 225; Richmond 



AND METHODS. IOI 

Avenue, Buffalo, 225 ; South Park Avenue, Chi- 
cago, 220; Tabernacle, Binghamton, N. Y., 212; 
First Church, Hutchinson, Kan., 210; First 
Church, Rock Island, 111., 200; Factoryville, Pa., 
200; Sayre, Pa., 200; First Church, Burlington, 
la., 200; Hanson Place, Brooklyn, 190; First 
Church, Warren, O., 189; Carbondale, Pa., 186; 
First Church, Xenia, O., 185; Grove City, Pa., 
185; St. John's, Brooklyn, 185; Philmont, N. Y., 
181 ; Mason City, la., 181 ; Grace Church, Denver, 
Colo., 180; Epworth, New Castle, Pa., 180; In- 
dependence Avenue, Kansas City, Mo., 175; 
Newton, N. J., 175; Simpson Memorial, Phila- 
delphia, 175. 

Great Cradle Rolls, — The Cradle Roll is not 
yet officially reported in the Conference Minutes. 
We have, therefore, a very imperfect list ; but by 
direct report to the Sunday-school Union we know 
of many very large rolls of these "least ones" now 
recognized as belonging to Christ's flock. This is 
the true "Infant Class" now, and the shepherding 
of the smallest children goes on with blessed re- 
sults both to the home and to the Sunday-school. 
Every Sunday-school ought at once, whether 
large or small, to take care of the babies in its field 
of work. Here are the largest Cradle Rolls we 
know about by correspondence : 

First, Brazil, Ind 286 infants enrolled. 

Central, Wilkesbarre, Pa 265 " " 

Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y 235 " *^ 

Fremont Street, Gloversville, N. Y .... 150 " " 



io2 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 



Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia, Pa 150 infants enrolled. 

First Church, Los Angeles, Cal 150 

Siloam, Philadelphia, Pa 148 

Elm Park, Scranton, Pa 135 

Simpson Memorial, Philadelphia, Pa. . . 125 

Centenary, Newark, N. J 101 

First Church, Canton, 100 

Kensington, Philadelphia, Pa 91 

Hanson Place, Brooklyn, N. Y 90 

Halsted Street, Chicago, 111 87 

First Church, Huntington, Ind 75 

Kpworth, Marion, 75 

First Church, Elgin, 111 70 

First Church, Englewood, Chicago, 111. . 66 

Asbury, Wilmington, Del 62 

St. James, Chicago, 111 60 

North Avenue, Allegheny, Pa 54 

First Church, Rochester, N. Y 53 

St. John's, Brooklyn, N. Y 51 

Janes, Brooklyn, N. Y 50 






SUNDAY-SCHOOL MEMBERSHIP IN 
PROPORTION TO POPULATION. 

[Report to Denver Convention, 1902.] 

In a Few Great States. 

In California and Kentucky, 8 per cent; in 
Minnesota, n percent; Massachusetts, 12; Geor- 
gia, 13; Colorado, New Hampshire, 14; Illinois, 
Michigan, New York, 17; Iowa, Nebraska, 18; 
New Jersey, Vermont, 19; Maryland, Kansas, 
20; North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, 21 ; Indiana, 
Mississippi, 22 ; Oregon, Pennsylvania, 23 ; Dela- 
ware, 25. 

SUNDAY-SCH00L,S IN THE WORLD, I902. 

252,510 Sunday-schools; 2,388,449 teachers, 
23,049,009 scholars, a total of over 25,000,000. 
Great Britain has 53,590 schools, 704,955 teach- 
ers, 7,875,748 scholars; Germany has 7,131 
schools, 39,872 teachers, 814,175 scholars; Aus- 
tralia, 7,458 schools, 54,670 teachers, 595,031 
scholars ; India has 5,578 schools, 13,937 teachers, 
247,400 scholars. 

103 



i04 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 



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THE SUCCESS OF SOME GREAT SUN- 
DAY-SCHOOLS. 

Of the thirty-two thousand superintendents 
of Methodist Episcopal Sunday-schools more than 
a thousand are men of unusual ability, and these 
thousand leaders are experimenting with the best 
plans for a Sunday-school successful in the best 
sense in its important mission in the Church. 
Some of these superintendents are men of remark- 
able administrative power, trained in great mer- 
cantile or manufacturing enterprises; others are 
men of rich culture received in colleges ; some of 
them professional teachers, who bring to the 
Bible-school their fine pedagogical skill; nearly 
all of them men of deep spirituality and evangel- 
istic zeal. We may expect some valuable sug- 
gestions in methods from these schools as the 
field workers gather them. We here formulate 
a few of these helpful points : 

Exalting the Bible. — There are many Sunday- 
schools which have a Bible in every scholar's and 
teacher's hands every Sunday. To induce the 
boys to carry Bibles in one school the mothers 
sew a "Bible pocket" inside their coats large 
enough for the thin, neat edition of the Bible 
that school has adopted. Another school urges 

106 



METHODS. 107 

the mother or father to present the Bible to the 
boy or girl. Another has persuaded the scholars 
themselves to buy and own their Bibles. One 
school records in the teacher's report the fact of 
having a Bible, and the secretary's report sums 
up this item. Many schools have a show of Bible 
at the opening of the session. No mutilated or 
unattractive copies of the Bible should be used. 

Enlarging the Membership. — Sunday-schools 
now feel their responsibility to get in every per- 
son in their whole parish. One great school di- 
vides its field among seventy-five men and women, 
and makes each person permanently responsible 
for his or her "block." Each investigates first for 
all Methodist families or those inclined to Meth- 
odist Churches ; lays siege to secure every person 
in these families for the school; and calls to his 
aid the pastor, the deaconess, and the superin- 
tendent, to win these persons. That school grows 
by from fifty to one hundred members a month. 
Another school in a town of ten thousand has 
nearly two thousand in membership, with 278 
babies on its Cradle Roll. Many schools, already 
large in numbers, have grown wonderfully in 
two years. Two years ago there were 28 schools 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church, with more 
than one thousand enrolled, last year there were 
35 such schools, and this year [1903] 45. 

Educational Development. — Many of our Sun- 
day-schools have used the two lessons each Sun- 



108 SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

day for many years. The General Bible Lessons 
have been an inspiration to them. Some of their 
classes, twelve years of age, pass examinations 
upon Bible history and the Methodist Discipline 
"that would do credit to preachers." In other 
schools there is an eight, in some a ten years' 
course, of General Lessons with graduation. Ex- 
aminations are held quarterly and yearly. In one 
school there is a "principal" in each department 
who has special charge of the teaching and lesson 
development. The superintendent in that school 
is busy with enlarged administrative work. One 
school, having a large supply of normal trained 
teachers, tried the .plan of having two teachers 
in every class, the second to act as secretary, as 
assistant visitor, and as substitute when the main 
teacher was absent. And so fine is the sense of 
personal responsibility in that school that no 
teacher took advantage of having an assistant to 
shirk any duty. 

Training the Teachers. — Two great schools, 
at least, have their entire teaching force to con- 
sist of normal trained teachers. In one case the 
local Normal Department covers three years, with 
strict examinations, and this school has an over- 
supply of teachers. The most successful plan now 
divides into two normal classes ; the one meeting 
during the week to improve the present teaching 
force by our Bible Institute or some other course 
of study ; and the other a well-developed Normal 



AND METHODS. 109 

Department for future teachers, meeting during 
the Sunday-school hour. This department is fre- 
quently started by using some young people's 
Bible class, or adult class, as the nucleus, and then 
inviting earnest people from the Church to join 
it or to form a second normal class in the depart- 
ment. 

Securing Home Co-operation. — The Home 
Department and the Cradle Roll are of phenom- 
enal growth, and serve as a vital bond with the 
home. Plans of visitation are adopted by some 
schools with success ; writing of letters is system- 
atically done in others. A reception by the 
teachers and officers to all the parents is very 
successful. One school laid plans far in advance, 
determined to have every parent present, sent 
written invitations to all, sent messages by the 
children, and made personal calls upon doubtful 
ones to insure their presence. They had a sur- 
prising attendance, served light refreshments, pre- 
sented the plans of the school, and the points 
where they desired parents to co-operate. It was 
"the best thing they ever did for their school." 
Their attendance was larger and more regular, 
lessons were studied at home, and children were 
led to Christ in large numbers. 

Evangelistic Success. — One school has reap- 
ing days twice a year. The earnest superintend- 
ent notes the new scholars and reaches every one 
of them. Another school worked for several 



IIO SUNDAY-SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 

weeks up to Decision-day, calling the teachers 
together for prayer until every teacher was in 
line, then bringing in the parents ; and when the 
public effort was made, every unsaved scholar 
present to the number of about two hundred ac- 
cepted Christ. Some are meeting every new 
scholar on the first Sunday he comes with an 
appeal to come to Christ. In the present enthu- 
siasm for better educational work in the Sunday- 
school it is inspiring to note everywhere an even 
more earnest effort to have every one saved. — 
Sunday-school Union Manual. 






MAR 27 1905 



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